


The Third Mission: The Gang Infiltrates a Star Destroyer

by angel_deux



Series: Won't You Let Us Wander [6]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, F/M, Fix-It, Minor Chirrut Îmwe/Baze Malbus, but definitely a caper at heart?, but it still has the vibe of a somewhat sad team caper, description of torture, i changed the title because i couldn't get over "the gang steals a star destroyer", occasional discussion of suicide, on my laptop this mission is titled 'the gang steals a star destroyer', so spoiler alert they don't steal it, the continued misadventures of Rogue One, until I did some research and realized how many people actually work on Star Destroyers, which was the initial plot of this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-22 12:23:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9607457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_deux/pseuds/angel_deux
Summary: Cassian is imprisoned on the Imperial Star Destroyer Afflictor, and Draven is prepared to send an assassin to make sure he doesn't talk. But Cassian has a few friends who aren't ready to give up on him quite yet.





	1. We Can Definitely Explain This

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to post this last night, but it REALLY didn't want to work, so let's try this again! 
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me through the past two installments. Have a slightly hopeful, slightly comedic break before we get back to your scheduled angst!

Jyn is still in bed, wrapped up against the cold, when she hears that he has been captured.

She wonders if Chirrut can tell, as he stands in the doorway to her room, that the coat she’s wearing, the coat she has been wearing for the past week, belongs to Cassian. She wonders if any part of it still smells of him. Or maybe that hint she catches sometimes, that reminder that makes her both furious and achingly sad, is just her imagination.

“Captured,” she says blankly. Her fingers curl into fists at the edges of the sleeves, clutching some of the fabric and holding tight. “Captured means dead.”

“No,” Chirrut replies, and he seems torn between relief and something else. “Not this time.”

* * *

Bodhi reads the message. He and Chirrut and Baze were all here, in the command center, when Lars received the transmission from Yavin. Emergency communication. Heavily coded. Bodhi doesn’t look at her when she walks in, Chirrut holding onto her arm. Baze does, but she almost wishes he hadn’t. His look is too full of something sad and unexpected.

Bodhi’s voice is surprisingly steady when he reads.

“Suicide pill was confiscated prior to capture. Agent is presumed alive and under torture for information.”

Jyn doesn’t sit down yet. There’s a part of her that wants to be ready to run if she has to.

“Who sent the message?” she asks. “Draven?”

“Ah, no.” Allar is the one who steps forward now, scratching at the back of his head. “That’s the odd thing. Draven sent a different message.”

“A lie,” Chirrut summarizes. He hasn’t let go of her arm.

“ _Captain Andor KIA_ ,” Allar quotes.

“That’s it?”

“That’s Draven,” Allar says helplessly. Jyn is almost breathlessly glad that she hadn’t been awake for the first communication. She might’ve flown back to Yavin to deck Draven herself.

“Who sent the other message?”

“A friend of ours who works in Intelligence,” Lars puts in. “Let’s leave it at that. Clearly, he didn’t want Draven to know he was making the transmission.”

“At least _someone_ there isn’t a bastard,” Baze says.

“Why would Draven lie?” Bodhi asks. Allar looks at him like he’s not sure if Bodhi’s serious or just making an ill-timed joke.

“He’s head of Intelligence. His job is to lie. Look, I don’t know how much you know about it, but…Intelligence does the things we’d rather not know about.”

“Yeah, we gathered that along the way,” Jyn says dryly, thinking of Cassian’s rifle in the sniper configuration. Allar hesitates, still looks uncertain.

“I’m saying…I’m saying that if Draven reported Captain Andor as dead, it means that Captain Andor may as well be dead.”

Jyn hears that, hears the sympathy and the anxiety in Allar’s tone, and she stifles her own urge to snap, because as much as she needs to get this fear out of her _somehow_ , yelling at the messenger isn’t the way to do it.

“We aren’t the kind of people to pay all that much attention to the odds,” she says dryly. “We need to find out where Cassian is. Lars, contact your friend. Ask him.”

“I did that already.”

“Where, then?”

Lars doesn’t want to answer. It’s Bodhi, still holding onto the message, fingers tight around it, who says, “they’ve got him on a Star Destroyer, Jyn.”

“I don’t care if they’ve got him in Vader’s bloody living room.”

“I know,” Bodhi says. “I don’t care either. But…it’s not going to be easy.”

“That friend of ours,” Allar says, gaining courage again, sounding a little desperate for her to listen. “He’s not an operative. He’s an analyst. So he knows. And he’s told me before the kinds of things…they’ll send someone, Jyn.”

“To rescue him?”

Chirrut makes a sad, scoffing noise of derision.

“No, little star. This is war. They can’t afford to risk their secrets getting out.”

Realization dawns quickly. It’s not even so hard to believe. She pictures Draven’s face (blank, unapologetic) and she feels a flare of anger. Galen, lying dead on the platform. Cassian’s supply of suicide pills, nestled in his drawer. As essential to his uniform as his holster. _Expendable_. That’s what they are. That’s what they _all_ are. She understands why, she even understands the need for things like suicide pills, as disgusted as they make her. But to stare it in the face like this…

She has reconciled a lot of things about the Rebellion. She has learned to overlook, to forgive, to try to forget, so many things she never thought she would be able to accept at first. The cause necessitates the extreme measures that a man like Draven represents.

Still. _Still_. There are some lines she has such a hard time crossing.

“Draven will send someone to kill him,” she says. Allar nods. Bodhi curses in a voice that shakes. Baze narrows his eyes at everyone and looks to be planning the best way to kill everyone involved in that decision. Jyn just reaches for Chirrut’s hand, squeezes it. He squeezes back.

She wonders, fleetingly, how many people Cassian has assassinated for the same reasons. How many times has he snuck into an Imperial prison just to end the life of one of his comrades? She has understood for a long time that there are things he’s done that he isn’t proud of. Things that give him his own nightmares. She doesn’t need to know exactly what they are to know that his tendency to martyr himself for the convenience of others is based around the fact that the pain and the exhaustion and the struggle is what he thinks he deserves.

She wonders if at this very moment, Cassian is sitting in his cell and thinking that this is his penance.

“What can we do?” Bodhi asks. Hesitating, he looks around the room. “We’re going to do _something_ , right?”

And Jyn has been betrayed before.

To put it more accurately, Jyn has been betrayed far more often than she’s had people actually honor their friendships, their bonds, their deals.

But there’s something unique in the agony of thinking that Cassian fled so quickly. That she showed him a side of her that it took all her courage to expose, and the first thing he did was run.

_I’m not going anywhere._

It doesn’t mean she wants the man to rot in an Imperial prison. It doesn’t mean she wants him to die by the hand of someone who’s supposed to be on his side. It doesn’t even make him any less her home.

It just means that it all hurts in more than one way, now. She wishes it could be all fury, but it isn’t. And she wishes it could be all sadness, too. It would make everything so much easier if she could pack it all away like that. But it’s a blend of things.

“Of course we’re going to do something,” she says, her voice a sneer. It’s got an edge of spite to it. She can hear the tone. Can hear _we’re going to save his self-sacrificial ass whether he wants us to or not_. “We’re going to beat the assassin there, and we’re going to rescue him.”

“Finally,” Baze says, grinning. “I was getting bored here anyway.”

Chirrut smiles as he sits next to his partner, turning a smug glance his way. “Liar. You were getting _cold_.”

Baze gives a shrug and a grin at that, silencing Chirrut with a small kiss.

Jyn stares down at the table and tries to think past the roaring anger, the panic, the growing certainty that she will never get the chance to hear the explanation she has _needed_ to hear from him. Ever since the shock faded a bit, after Bodhi asked her to trust him that Cassian hadn’t _wanted_ to leave, it’s been replaced by the old need again. This time, the needs is for validation. For explanation. For the truth.

She and Cassian are alike in a lot of ways. That’s part of why she feels what she feels for him. She knows they’re both unused to this, this delicate balancing of emotions, and she knows that he followed her with his kiss, that his hands shook when he held her. She knows that there’s a reason that he left, and she has to trust her belief that it wasn’t because of any lack of feeling.

It’s hard not to be angry, to be defensive, to go cold and insecure the way she so often has in the past. But this isn’t just about what she wants from him – apology, explanation, promises that he’ll never be this dense again. This is about his life. No amount of anger could make her want to do anything less than give everything she has to save him. She remembers the way he looked at her on Kopha, struggling to conceal his emotions when he realized she was safe.

He would do the same thing for her. No matter how angry he was, he would do the same for her.

Jyn hasn’t loved a person since Saw dropped her at the age of sixteen. But Rogue One, her team, her family, she loves _them._ All of them, for all their differences, have become a cluster of symbiosis that have left her feeling more fulfilled than anything else in her life. Even when she’s uncomfortable, when she struggles to find a place, she knows that she has _them_. And without him, without their leader, without the extremely frustrating force that is Cassian, she knows that they’re all at risk of losing the dynamic forever.

Jyn has lost so much in her life. She can’t stand the thought of losing this too.

* * *

Jyn has never been one for planning. If it was up to her, she’d take a blaster pistol and make it up as she went along. Luckily, Chirrut is a little more patient about it. And Baze, who always seems like his plans consist of not getting shot or shooting to avoid getting shot, is surprisingly vocal as well.

“I’m guessing a Hammerhead isn’t going to work,” he says. They’re not all _winning_ ideas, but at least it’s something.

Bodhi, too, provides invaluable experience, offering, “I’ve been on Star Destroyers before. Never to the cells, but I know where they are. I know the layouts. It depends on the class, but they’re all…they’re all sort of similar, I guess.”

“The first problem is transportation,” Chirrut says. “We can’t take Rogue One. We’ll need an Imperial ship, and we need disguises, or we’ll be taken into custody as soon as we land.”

“ _If_ we’re lucky,” Baze points out.

“They may just shoot us down and have it over with,” Jyn agrees.

“Are we sure an arrest isn’t what we want?” Bodhi says. “Get us right to the cells.”

Chirrut shakes his head. “That would be risking a lot. Assuming a lot, too.”

“I could get out of whatever cell they put me in.”

“Says the woman who joined the Rebellion after they broke her out of _prison_ ,” Chirrut laughs.

“A prison _planet_. That was different. There was nowhere to escape _to_. And anyway, I’ve gotten even better than before. I could get out of the cell, but I’m not sure what I’d do to get Cassian out safely.”

“Well. I’m glad to see I made this trip for nothing,” says a voice from the door.

Leia, removing her gloves. Flanked on either side by Chewbacca and Han Solo.

“Oh,” Jyn says.

“We can _definitely_ explain this,” Bodhi says, making no attempt to actually do so.

“I don’t want you to explain it. I want you to do it,” Leia says, her rigidity the most comforting thing Jyn has ever heard.

“You want us to, presumably without Council approval, break into a Star Destroyer?” Jyn asks.

“That’s the exact reaction _I_ had,” Han drawls. Chewbacca makes a noise of agreement that apparently only Han and Bodhi can understand, because they both give him the same raised-eyebrow look. Leia ignores them.

“I’m here to _give_ you Council approval. Secretly, obviously. K2 pulled me aside after Draven told me Cassian was dead. I was already in the middle of trying to figure out how to compose a message for you. This seems a better use of all of our time. If Draven wants to leave a good man to die because of the risk involved, that’s up to him. But he doesn’t give me orders, and he doesn’t give them to _you_ , either. So here you go. Official permission.”

Jyn understands, with this, that Leia doesn’t know about the assassin. She doesn’t know the lengths to which Draven has gone to protect the Rebellion.

She can infer a lot from that. Just like she could always infer a lot from the uncomfortable smile Cassian wore every time he spoke to Mon Mothma, Leia, Senators Vaspar and Pamlo and Jebel. Even sometimes around the team, when he spoke of the things he had seen and done in his years with the Rebellion, she could see some part of him holding back.

They don’t know. Not about the assassin, not about what Draven is willing to order and sacrifice and compromise to keep the Rebellion from crumbling beneath its own weight.

Jyn understands. She has understood from the moment she agreed to commandeer their first ship with all those men, riding into near-certain death because it was the right thing to do. She understands that Draven, ultimately, is doing what he believes is the right thing to do. He might even be correct. But his actions have put at risk someone very important to Jyn, and she can’t sit by and let that happen.

But she also can’t stand to be the one to expose him.

(Cassian. She doesn’t give a fuck about what exposure would do to Draven, but Cassian admires Leia, Mothma, Pamlo. Vaspar and Jebel _sort of_. The loss of their esteem would hurt him, and she won’t be the one to do it).

She hopes that the others follow her lead.

“All right,” she says, looking around the table. “As it stands, the Empire will question Cassian until he’s no longer useful to them. If they know he’s a spy, they’ll likely try to keep him alive as long as possible. If not, they’ll kill him or ship him off to somewhere like Wobani, and we’ll lose our chance to take him back. If anyone wants to sit this one out, I don’t blame you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bodhi says. He nods when she makes eye contact with him: he understands.

“If you try to leave us behind, we’ll catch our own ride,” Chirrut says.

“I’ll probably stay here,” Allar admits, trying for lighthearted, and Jyn gives him a half-felt smile in response, because she appreciates the effort. Jyn turns back to look at Leia, who’s got her hands on her hips, ready.

“Any ideas?” Jyn asks, a little hopelessly.

“My first idea was bringing Han. Figured if anyone could help get you somewhere illegally, it would be a smuggler.”

“Not even _I_ am crazy enough to try and infiltrate a damn Star Destroyer, but I appreciate the faith,” Han says. He takes a seat at the war table, almost immediately kicking his feet up on it.

“Han will help the team get started. I’ve brought you a few schematics of Star Destroyers we had on Yavin. Hopefully you can put them to use.”

“Yeah, give it here. I’ll take a look,” Bodhi says. Chewbacca hands over the schematics, making another indeterminable noise and moving to stand behind Chirrut and Baze.

“Jyn?”

Jyn looks at Leia reluctantly, knowing what’s going to be waiting. And she’s right: Leia’s expression very clearly says _can we talk_?

“Fill me in when I get back,” Jyn says to her friends. They all look varying degrees of worried. About trying to figure out a plan with the notoriously volatile former smuggler and his temperamental Wookie partner or about Jyn being asked to speak to the Rebellion leader in private, it isn’t clear.

“We’ll figure this out,” Bodhi promises before she goes. He even sounds like he believes it.


	2. This is Not a Good Plan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a nice long chapter that's mostly talking, coming right before a somewhat short chapter that's mostly shootouts! I'm a few chapters ahead of myself in editing, so hopefully I'll be able to post tomorrow too!

Jyn feels preemptively defensive as she leads Leia to her quarters. She gestures for Leia to sit in the small chair in the corner, but the princess shakes her head, her expression blank, slightly wary. As soon as the door closes, her mask slips, just a little.

“We were wrong to send him on that mission,” she says. Jyn doesn’t know how to respond to that, so she doesn’t, except for a slight upward tick of the eyebrows as she takes a seat on the edge of her bed. “General Draven convinced him that Intelligence needed him, that he was shirking his duty to the Rebellion by being here when he could be off putting himself in danger. I didn’t know this at first. Draven just told me that Captain Andor was the best and only choice.”

“He probably was the best choice,” Jyn points out.

“I know. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t done for the wrong reasons. We sent he and K2 to infiltrate the Star Destroyer Afflictor, posing as an Imperial-affiliated bounty hunter named Korvig Palley who was dropping off the body of a wanted informant. He was supposed to gain access to the prisoner logs and confirm or deny the presence of one of my father’s most trusted allies, as had been reported by one of our contacts. We had no contact with either of them until a day later, when K2 returned alone.”

“Did K say what happened?”

“Someone tripped the alarms. K2 said he wasn’t even sure what triggered it. Just that Cassian tried to dissolve the concern, but he was surrounded and taken. His jacket and that _kriffing_ suicide pill knocked out of his reach. Given that the information from our contact turned out to be incorrect, Draven is convinced that our contact deliberately fed us false information.”

“It was a trap, you’re saying,” Jyn says, harsh, and Leia’s mask slips even farther.

“I’m so sorry, Jyn.”

“I’m not the one you should be apologizing to.”

“Aren’t you? Cassian doesn’t have many other friends. And you…you’re special to him.”

“Stop.”

Her voice sounds small, to her. Small and shocked and a little desperate. _Stop. Please don’t make this worse. Please don’t make this harder than it already is_.

“I didn’t realize just _how_ special until we were leaving here last. Until I heard him talking to Bodhi about you. How desperate he was for you to believe that…”

“ _Leia_.”

Jyn generally does her best not to address the princess directly. Leia insists on _Leia_ , scoffs at the title of _princess,_ but that’s never made Jyn comfortable. Instead, she doesn’t call her anything. Now, the name comes out as if they’ve been friends for years. As if Leia is someone she can snap at like this, can tell to back off like this.

“You’re going to try to tell me you don’t want to hear this?”

“I don’t.”

“After I put together such a lovely speech?”

Leia’s tone is light, joking in a way, despite the bitterness, but she’s watching Jyn carefully. And, as always, Jyn feels a desire to make Leia understand.

“If you think I need a reason to rescue him, you’re wrong. He’s my captain. He’s my _friend_. He left, and I’m furious with him. And I’m furious with you for taking him, and I don’t have words to describe my anger with Draven for using him, for- for convincing him to go back to doing what he doesn’t want to do anymore. And I’m furious that Cassian allowed himself to be manipulated! Knowing as he does that he was _miserable_ under Draven. I haven’t stopped being angry since he left here. That doesn’t mean I need to be _motivated_ to save him.”

“I’m not trying to imply that, Jyn.”

Jyn hates how calm Leia sounds. She’s usually all fire, all snark, all biting criticisms and a brassy, unselfconscious laugh of derision. But Jyn is angry, and now Leia is deadly calm. Almost unreactive. Almost shuttered off. Jyn wants her to fight back. Jyn wants a _defense_. She doesn’t want this sad, reflective expression that looks too knowing, too understanding, like every word Jyn says only makes Leia more certain that she’s right about whatever she thinks she’s right about.

“Well then what _are_ you trying to imply? Because I understand. I know what happened. I don’t need to be told that Cassian went and did something stupid and self-sacrificing in the name of the Rebellion. I don’t need to be told that he didn’t want to do it, either.”

“If anger was the only thing I was seeing right now, I wouldn’t need to say anything,” Leia says. It’s short, pointed, not meant to be mean, and yet it burns Jyn a little. It hurts to have it mentioned. “Cassian and I are cut from the same cloth. And I know you’re one of us, even if our motivations are different. We all have the unfortunate personality defect that we would give anything for the things that are important to us. We would sacrifice anything. We would endure anything. For both Cassian and I, for most of our lives, that has been The Rebellion. And I’m not saying he’s not still the same dedicated soldier. Obviously, his absence is proof enough of that. But I’ve seen in him lately the kind of wearing thin that I haven’t seen him in him before. You’re right that he doesn’t _want_ to be separated from your team. He doesn’t want to work for that asshole any more than I probably would. He wants to be put to use in a way that’s a little less thankless. A little less exhausting. Draven’s the only one who objects to that, I think.”

“No. Cassian objects to it too,” Jyn admits quietly, and Leia gives a small smile.

“Self-sacrificing, you said?”

“He’ll run himself into the ground before he admits he might be happier doing something else.”

“Draven convinced him that his skills are too valuable to allow him to be here, where he wants to be. I don’t know the contents of Cassian’s missions. I don’t know what Draven has him doing. Draven has always kept a tight seal around his department, and we look the other way because he gets _results._ We ignore the hollow eyes of a man like Cassian and we thank him for his service, and we hand him back over to Draven again. But that fact alone…even if I didn’t know Cassian as well as I do, that fact alone would be enough for me to guess that he’s not happy doing what he has been doing. But I _do_ know him. I can see it. I can see the difference between how he looked here, on Hoth, and how he looked during that briefing with Draven. Like all the warmth had left him. But when I said that to him, he said ‘this isn’t about my happiness’. He was happy here. He was happy with you. He just…doesn’t care about that.”

Jyn thinks of his head pillowed on her chest, his breathing soft and even, his whispered _thank you_. The weight of him pushing her down into the mattress, like he was heavier than he had a right to be, like his exhaustion added weight in addition to years.

“Doesn’t care about that?” she asks.

“His happiness. I doubt I need to tell you that he doesn’t think he deserves it.”

Jyn sighs at that, looks down at her hands, clenched in her lap.

“No. You don’t.”

She wonders briefly what Leia must think. Does she know any specifics? Or is any knowledge just an assumption? Her distaste for Draven is already so clear. Jyn wonders how she would feel about him if she knew about the assassination. About the things Cassian won’t even name. What does Leia think, Jyn wonders, Cassian has done that has earned his self-loathing? _Jyn_ doesn’t even know.

“Might make you feel better to hear he called himself a coward,” Leia says, but she doesn’t sound overly hopeful of that.

“Would it make _you_ feel better?” Jyn wonders. That might be a little too far, but Leia seems to understand: Jyn has a feeling that the ways in which they are similar probably extends to the need to lash out when things get too close.

“Maybe. Depends on if I thought he was right.”

Jyn thinks this whole thing would be a lot easier if she could say definitively _what_ she thought.

“Draven,” she says quietly, instead of vocalizing that. “He thinks Cassian has been compromised, doesn’t he? By us. Me. He thinks Cassian has gone soft.”

“I think that’s a fair assessment.”

“I should have gone to Geonosis.”

“You’re not blaming yourself, are you?”

“No. I’m still blaming you and Draven. Cassian too. But I knew what it looked like when he refused to send me if I didn’t want to go. I knew what Draven would think. I just didn’t…I assumed that Draven would get over it.”

“That was where you got it wrong,” Leia says dryly. “Draven is many things, but a wavering personality is not one of them.” When Jyn doesn’t answer, giving only a forced smile in response, Leia says, “I’m sorry.” It’s sincere and sad and too much for Jyn to handle. “Telling you what I believe he feels is the least I could do.”

Jyn feels very little humor at that, but she lets out a short, sharp laugh anyway.

“The least you could do is convince Draven to leave us alone,” she says bitterly. “Haven’t we done enough? None of you would be here if it wasn’t for us, if it wasn’t for Cassian. The Death Star is gone because of us. None of the Council were willing to lift a finger, so we stole a shuttle and rode into what we thought for _sure_ would be our last battle, and we saved all of you! We were doing _fine_ here! We were surviving. We were…” she shakes her head, losing steam. What’s the point? What’s the point of getting angry? When the words don’t make sense even to _her,_ when the anger feels too spread out?

“I don’t know what else you need me to say,” Leia says.

“I don’t know what else I need you to say either,” Jyn admits. “Maybe it seems I don’t understand that difficult things need to be done for the Rebellion. I do understand. I’ve understood Cassian since almost the beginning, and as much as I want to hit Draven even more every time I see him, I understand him as well. But it’s different when it’s someone you care about. Maybe not to you, but…”

“No, I understand what you’re saying,” Leia says. She’s gentle and sad, and she looks like she wants to reach out, but she just twists her discarded gloves in her hands, looking at them like she’s trying to wring some meaning out of them.

“It’s hard to swallow,” Jyn says, trying again. “That a man you care for deeply – even if he _is_ acting like an ass – is seen by the people he’s dedicated his life to as expendable. It makes me nervous. Makes me wonder if Saw wasn’t right after all when he left you lot to squabble and manipulate amongst yourselves, left you to your politics and your careful manipulation. Maybe he was right that a small group of fighters can get more done than an organization that treats the best of its men as so easily disposable.

Leia smiles lightly, wearing the insult, bearing it like she’s borne everything else. But there’s a hint of sadness to it too.

“It’s not my vision for our Rebellion either,” she admits. “Too many on the Council know nothing of the sacrifices they ask for. Too many of the generals act as if they’re Imperials themselves, demanding unquestioning loyalty. The Rebellion was built on my father, on Mon Mothma, on all of them asking questions, refusing to follow the emperor blindly. I understand what you’re saying. But a system is important. We need to stick together, to work together, or risk being a thousand voices too quiet for the Empire to hear, rather than one voice shouting him down. A system is necessary. Even if it’s occasionally a flawed system.”

“Pretty words, if only we were talking generalities. But we aren’t. We’re talking about _Cassian_. Saying it’s a good system even if you occasionally let a good man slip through the cracks doesn’t work when you’re talking to that man’s friends.”

“You’re right,” Leia says, which infuriates Jyn for some reason. Not that she would have accepted any defense easily, but the fact that there _isn’t_ one is almost worse.

“I know I am. And maybe once we’re finished saving him, that’ll be a problem to address. But right now, I’m not interested in anything but getting my team back together.”

Leia hesitates, but after a long, thoughtful moment, she nods.

“K2 is in the hanger,” she says finally. “He thought you wouldn’t want to see him, but he’ll be useful to have along.”

“He was right. I don’t want to see him,” Jyn says, but she gets up to go find him anyway.

* * *

K-2SO is standing beside Rogue One, looking towards the ground. He might look a little forlorn. Maybe he’s just in low power mode. He looks like a child about to be scolded. Jyn doesn’t feel sorry for him.

“Guess that important mission didn’t go quite like you expected,” she says. K-2SO’s shoulders hunch defensively as he looks up from the ground.

“Jyn,” he says, for once not seeming smug or even disappointed to see her. “I’m…here to help. However I can.”

“I think you’ve done enough, haven’t you?” Jyn asks. There’s not as much pleasure in it as she would have hoped. It feels cruel. Never mind that if their positions were reversed, K-2SO would be reveling in this. “Come on, then. You can help Bodhi map out the Afflictor.

“Understood,” K-2SO says. He hesitates. “I should not have left Cassian.”

Slightly surprised by that, by even this bare admittance that one of Cassian’s orders was less than perfect, Jyn tilts her head to one side as she observes him.

“No,” she agrees. “You shouldn’t have.”

“There was an eighty-six percent chance that we would both be caught if I stayed. The numbers were too high. I had to leave.”

“You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself,” Jyn points out, and there’s something about that that strikes her, that makes her curious. K-2SO has always been the strangest droid she’s ever known - and she’s counting that one farm droid Galen tried to program himself that spent most of its time wandering the fields, humming tunelessly and pretending to work.  But there’s something even odder to Jyn in the fact that K-2SO is looking to her and within himself for absolution.

“I don’t need to convince myself. I know the numbers. I know it was the right choice. Cassian knew it too. But if I did not leave, there was a chance for him to be safe. Because I left, there was a one hundred percent chance that Cassian would be taken.”

“Looking at the numbers another way?” Jyn guesses.

“Cassian doesn’t like to hear the numbers sometimes. He would rather risk something even if there are overwhelming odds. Like you. The numbers have always said that you will bring him nothing but trouble. But would he hear them? No. And when he finally leaves you, even for a little while, to go on a mission that had a seventy two percent chance of succeeding without any grievous harm to him, he falls into their hands.

“Maybe your numbers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be,” Jyn says.

“No, that’s not true, they are perfectly sound. But with this new data, my assessment of your impact on Cassian’s missions has been changed to reflect your favorable qualities and what I perceive to be your intense refusal to let Cassian come to any harm.”

“Picked up on that, did you?” Jyn asks. But even her sarcasm seems weak, deflected. Her heart isn’t in it. “Come on, then. Let’s get back to the others. We have a rescue to plan.”

He doesn’t look any less downtrodden, but he falls into step beside her.

“I am sorry, Jyn,” he says.

“ _What_?”

“You seem surprised. I find it highly unlikely that the surprise is because you think I have nothing to apologize for, so I must assume that it is surprise that I am apologizing at all.”

“I guess it’s confusion as to which of the many things you’ve done is so bad even _you_ think it warrants apology.”

“I understand now why Cassian took the mission from General Draven. It was not because he was bored. _I_ was bored, because it was boring, but Cassian prefers boredom to excitement, evidently.” He seems to remember suddenly that he’s supposed to be apologizing. “I should not have said to you that Cassian was leaving because he was bored here. I was wrong, and Cassian explained why, and I understand. You were the person most hurt by my incorrect assertion. Thus: apology. Please do not expect another one.”

“Guess that’ll have to do,” Jyn mutters, but she has trouble hiding a reluctant smile.

* * *

“This is not a good plan.”

Baze sounds resigned to it, though. Jyn understands how he feels. She can’t say she has complete confidence in it, either.

“The Falcon is fast enough to outrun anything the Empire can throw at her,” Han says, wildly defensive.

“That’s not the part I’m worried about,” Baze counters. He gestures to the schematics on the table in front of him. Old schematics, Bodhi had said, so the names of things are crossed out and scribbled over, arrows drawn to where things have moved in improved iterations. K-2SO provided a lot of missing pieces as well. “There are thousands of Imperial troops on that Star Destroyer. You can’t break someone out of there without raising alarm.”

“So it’s the _entire_ basic premise of this mission that you have a problem with,” Han says, accompanied by a short laugh and a glance at Chewbacca for support. “Listen, far as I’m concerned, we can pack up and leave your boy where he is, but I was led to believe that this was something you all were on board with. If that’s not the case, I’ve got better things to do.”

“No he doesn’t,” Leia says to the rest of the team.

Baze looks frustrated, and he takes a few more moments to study the map.

“I just don’t see how it’s possible to get someone from the hanger to the cells. And someone else to the power main. It can’t be done. It’s too many people.”

“What if we split up _before_ we get to the Afflictor?” Jyn asks. “If I can convince the Imperials I’m one of them, talk them into taking me to the medbay, look.” She leans over the schematics and draws a line with her finger between the two locations. “Look how close it is to the cells.”

Chirrut gives a soft chuckle, and Bodhi is already shaking his head.

“No, no, no,” he’s saying, gearing up to oppose her idea more heartily. “You did this once already. Sneaking into an Imperial installation and trying to act like you belonged there. Remember how that turned out?”

“I don’t, but Cassian said it did not end well for me,” K-2SO puts in.

“It _ended_ with the Death Star in a trillion pieces,” Jyn reminds them. “We transmitted the plans, didn’t we? A small team can get anywhere. That’s the _point_ of Rogue One! Following that logic, one person can do that even more effectively. And two people sneaking back out…”

“One person can also get into a lot of trouble on their own,” Han reminds her. “Speaking from my experience of infiltrating _the Death Star_ , remember? Only one of us didn’t make it out of there, and it was the idiot who wandered off alone.”

Leia waves him off, rolling her eyes at the handsome smuggler.

“What did you have in mind?” she asks Jyn.

Jyn hates the sudden pressure of everyone’s eyes on her. She swallows her reflexive answer: _I don’t know. Don’t look at me. What do I know anyway_? And she looks down at the schematics again and tries to corral the hundreds of competing snippets of information swirling around in her head.

_Breathe, Jyn. Trust yourself._

“You want Han and Chewbacca to lead the Afflictor toward Cyphis, because they can’t send any distress calls, right?”

Leia nods. “Right. Composition of the moon’s atmosphere and surrounding asteroid field will make it next to impossible.”

“You’re sure it’s abandoned?”

“Atmosphere is unsurvivable, yes. But it’s got a lot of places for the Falcon to hide, and Imperial scanners will be affected by the same issue that’ll keep them from calling for reinforcements.”

“What about automated turrets? Think you could get us a few of those?”

“I can’t promise they’d be very good ones on such short notice, but yes,” Leia says. She sounds doubtful to Jyn, but she’s letting it play out. She’s trusting Jyn.

“You can get some contacts to leak some false reports,” Jyn says. “Of Rebel activity in the area. Not too much, but enough that it will be marked of interest, especially with the Afflictor drifting so close to that system. I can sell that narrative to whoever’s in charge of the Afflictor. Just me, in whatever ship you don’t mind risking.”

“The princess is rich, kid, but she ain’t that rich. We’re low on ships as it is.”

“Then we steal one.”

“Steal one. Nice.” Han glances at Leia, pointedly. “It’s not that I don’t like her, but your friend has an interesting idea of what I’m willing to risk for this mission.”

“Like you’ll be taking any of the risk,” Jyn snaps. Chewie has something to say about that, though she’s not sure what it is.

“Okay, sure, some risk,” Bodhi agrees, clearly a little ruffled by the Wookie’s words. “But we can steal the shuttle ourselves. That’s not a problem.”

“I didn’t _say_ I wouldn’t help,” Han insists. Leia rolls her eyes so hard it’s almost audible.

“Alright, flyboy. Make up your mind. Jyn, what’s the plan _after_ you get the ship?”

“I hail the Afflictor. Tell them something about how my team was attacked by Rebels on Cyphis. Bodhi can report the same when he lands with the cargo.”

“Two fake ships, then.”

“Two fake ships,” Jyn agrees. Han scoffs.

“We’ve got an Imperial cargo runner on Yavin,” Leia says. “It’ll take some bullshitting, but I can get clearance for it to be released to Bodhi. But we don’t have an Imperial shuttle. You _will_ need to find one of those.”

“Perfect,” Jyn says, relieved. “Bodhi, Baze, and Chirrut can carry out the original plan in the cargo ship. Charges to take out the power. I’ll wait in the medbay for the power to go out, and then I can get into the cells, rescue Cassian, and be back to the hanger before they’ve figured out what’s gone wrong. I’ll have to get to Bodhi, because my stolen ship will likely be discovered as stolen fairly quickly, and I don’t want to risk them putting a tracker on it and leading them right back to the fleet.”

“If that’s a dig at my heroics on the Death Star…” Han says warningly, but Jyn ignores him.

“They’ll send a patrol down to Cyphis, follow the Falcon, but the turrets will distract them, and Han and Chewbacca should be able to get away easy. As long as that destroyer is close enough to Cyphis, they won’t be able to send out a distress call, and their internal comlinks will be spotty at best. Bodhi will be able to pull out before the power is restored. Easy.”

“Except you and Cassian will have to find your way to Bodhi’s ship in the dark, in the chaos of a power outage that they’re not going to understand,” Leia points out. “And who knows what shape Cassian will even be in.”

Jyn knows. Jyn has been a subject of Imperial torture before. She knows it isn’t going to be easy.

“It could work,” Chirrut says, backing her up. He doesn’t sound as confident as Jyn would like, but she appreciates the backup anyway.

“I know a place we could get a ship,” Bodhi says. Chewbacca, apparently enjoying the novelty of actually being able to talk to someone without Han translating, asks a question. Han nearly starts to explain it, reflexively, but Bodhi cuts him off. “Yes, it would have to be Imperial-occupied territory, but there’s this one outpost…”

“What planet?” Leia asks.

“Um, Falon 12? It’s not far from our target moon.”

“Falon 12? That place is a shithole,” Han snorts.

“Exactly. That’s the point! Easy to start a fight on the street and turn it into a riot. We can steal the ship in the chaos.”

“That’s…not terrible,” Han admits. Jyn gives Bodhi a proud smile. “I mean, it’s a lot of risk.”

“You talk an awful lot about risk for someone who can’t seem to describe himself without using the word ‘daring’ _._ ”

Speaking of _daring_ , that’s exactly what Leia’s doing, looking at Han like that, her eyebrow cocked upwards ruthlessly. _Come on, laserbrain_ , her expression says. _Prove me wrong_.

“Fine. I’ll help you steal the damn ship, and I’ll lead your damn Star Destroyer to the moon, too. This captain of yours better be worth it.”

“He is,” Jyn says, without even thinking. Han mutters something bitter as he gets to his feet.

Before they go, Leia turns to look at all of them.

“Are you sure about this?” she asks. It might as well be a courtesy, the way she asks it. “It’s dangerous. Only technically sanctioned. You could get in a lot of trouble even if you pull it off.”

“I’m sure,” Jyn says, looking at the others. They all give equally unwavering answers.

 “There are a lot of variables,” K-2SO says. “But the plan has an eighty nine percent chance of success.”

“Eighty nine percent, huh?” Leia asks, impressed. She looks at Han. “Bet those are better odds than the ones you and Luke would have gotten on the Death Star.”

“If we had this thing telling us that, we’d have turned around and left you.”

“Lucky for all of us, your greed outweighed your self-preservation.” Leia looks at the assembled group, all of them waiting for her reaction. She still looks worried. She looks as if she’s afraid she made a mistake, coming here. But she doesn’t back down. “Then I suppose it’s settled. Rogue One, may the force be with you.”


	3. You're Being Reckless Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, here's another chapter! Which didn't actually turn out to be all that short, and also includes way less shooting than I thought it did, but there are at least a few punches. 
> 
> Sincerely, thank you so much for continuing to read and comment. It really motivates me to keep editing and fleshing out the first draft of this, and I'm so glad that so many of you seem to like it. It really means SO much!

Cassian waits.

He isn’t sure how long it’s been. That’s part of the art of Raleigh’s torment: either the lights are on full blast or they’re off completely, plunging Cassian into darkness so complete he can’t even see his knees, bent in front of him. Sometimes the lights will be on for so long that Cassian is sure it has been _days_. Then darkness will come.

They don’t bother trying to feed him anymore, because he refused to eat. He fought them when they tried to force him. Now they do it intravenously, when he’s unconscious.

“You’re not dying until you give me the location of the Rebel fleet,” is how Raleigh explains it. He says it often, as if he thinks the idea will lodge in Cassian’s brain so deeply that Cassian will despair, will relent, will talk.

Cassian hasn’t spoken a single word since he’s been in this cell.

Everything the Empire does is done with ruthless efficiency. He’s clothed, cleaned, fed, all against his will. His hands are encased in metal bindings that completely immobilize his fingers, because early on he managed to pick the lock on his standard bindings and killed two of the Stormtroopers who entered his cell, nearly managed to kill Raleigh. The chains are so short that they’re always raised to the level of his neck, when he’s standing, or above his head if he’s sitting on the bench. This is so he can’t strangle himself, Raleigh explained. The only way to sit on the bench comfortably is sideways, his knees pulled up to his chest, his elbows resting on top of them, his head against the wall.

_Comfortably_ , here, is a relative term.

Every time he hears footsteps outside his cell, he wonders who it will be. And as it continues, as time goes on, he starts to hope more and more that it’s the assassin outside.

He no longer fears that he’ll give in. He no longer fears that they’ll be able to do anything to him that will make him betray the Rebellion. Raleigh’s increased frustration tells him that he’s reaching the end of his patience. That means there isn’t much more they can think to do to him. But there’s an eagerness to have it over with. An eagerness to finally rest that feels a little bit like that elevator on Scarif.

It felt _okay_ , on Scarif _._ It felt like he had done enough. The plans had been transmitted. The Death Star would be destroyed. And Jyn was alive, and mostly unharmed, and looking at him like she was thinking she would miss him when he was gone. Would anyone else? He didn’t think there was anyone _left_ to miss him. It felt good to know that there was one person who could, even though there was a bitterness to it.

They should have had more time. There should have been more time.

And then there _had_ been time, and he had wasted it.

_I shouldn’t have wasted our time_.

Maybe _that_ will be the message, when they come for him. Maybe that will help her understand.

* * *

Jyn packs light. She wears plain, unassuming clothing. The kinds of clothes a settler on Falon 12 might wear, according to Bodhi. She leaves most of her possessions behind on Hoth, as meager as they are. She doesn’t dwell on it. Doesn’t let herself think that she might be leaving this outpost for the last time. She doesn’t let herself think of anything but the next few minutes.

She almost leaves Cassian’s coat where it is, but in the end she rolls it up and ties it to her pack, hoists it over her shoulder.

* * *

Bodhi hugs Jyn tight as they stand in front of the soon-to-be-borrowed cargo ship on Yavin 4. There aren’t many people still left on this base, so Jyn knows they probably stand out, but most of the people running around are busy, are packing up the last dregs of the temple’s resources. They’ll join the rest of the fleet, soon. Drifting through space, avoiding Imperial systems, until Hoth can be fully established.

“I’ll see you on Falon 12,” Jyn says, smiling into Bodhi’s shoulder as she hugs him back. She understands his nerves: things don’t go well when they split up. Still, Jyn is convinced that it’s a good plan. She has faith in all of them. Even Han, though that faith is a bit reluctant.  

“I know. I just…there won’t be time to remind you to be careful once we get there.”

“You don’t need to remind me. You know I won’t listen anyway.”

Bodhi laughs as he pulls back, but he really _does_ look worried. Then again, that’s almost always true of Bodhi.

“Jyn will be all right, my boy,” Chirrut says, thumping Bodhi on the back as he strolls by, towards the cargo ship. “She has a fire in her heart. I would hate to be the man who tried to stop her now.”

“Just remember,” Baze says, looking at Jyn seriously. “Try not to kill the captain until he’s safe. Would hate to make the trip for nothing.”

Jyn laughs, a little hollow.

“I’m not going to kill him,” she says.

“I might,” Baze grumbles over his shoulder as he follows Chirrut.

“It’s no Rogue One, but it’ll do,” Bodhi decides, smiling awkwardly, trying to change the subject in a way that’s far too obvious. “There’s a smuggler’s compartment and everything. Perfect for hiding my extra passengers and their, uh. Dangerous explosives.”

“You don’t have to change the subject, Bodhi,” Jyn says. She squeezes his hand. “I trusted you when you said to wait for an explanation. That’s what I’m going to do.”

“But what if…what if they’ve already…if _they_ get there first and then you can’t…”

“K was able to tap into Draven’s communications. The assassin is being cleared through Imperial channels, his cover solidified. We have some time.”

“ _Some_ time. And if something goes wrong on Falon 12…”

“Nothing’s going to go wrong on Falon 12.”

“It’s _absurd_ that you can say that with a straight face.”

“Let’s get a move on,” Solo hisses as he stalks by. “This is supposed to be covert. Shoulda said your sappy goodbyes on the way over.”

Leia, following closely behind him, slows down as she reaches the two rogues.

“Don’t listen to him,” she says. “The generals are meeting right now. No one will notice the cargo ship missing for hours, and even then, Luke’s agreed to help me cover for it. You’ll have time to get it done.”

“See?” Jyn points out to Bodhi, who just shakes his head at her and goes to the ship. When Jyn turns back to Leia, she can’t help but say, “maybe this will be enough for you to stop hounding me about my potential.”

“If you fail, sure,” Leia says. But she’s smiling, and she squeezes Jyn’s shoulder. “I think I understand now. Why you would want to stay with them. It’s a good team you’ve got, Sergeant Erso.”

And Jyn only nods in response, because it’s not her team. Not really. It’s his.

“I’ll let them know you said that,” she says.

“Please do. And stop looking so grim. Try to start believing the pep talk you were trying to give you pilot, will you? You know what you’re doing.”

“Right,” Jyn sighs, accepting a small hug from the princess. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”

* * *

_“I lied,” K-2SO said, back on Rogue One, on the way to Yavin. He was cornering her in her cabin, shoulders still hunched like he was bracing for impact. When she just looked at him, waiting, he elaborated, “I said the mission has an eighty nine percent chance of success, but that was a lie. Your mission has only a twenty-three percent chance of success. If I had not lied, there was a seventy percent chance they would try to think of some other way, and we cannot waste time, and most of the alternate plans I was able to come up with have an even smaller chance of success. I thought you should know.” He paused, considered. “I will not tell the others. Only you.”_

_“Thanks,” Jyn answered, because she didn’t know what else to say._

_“A twenty-three percent chance of saving Cassian is better than a zero percent chance. I knew that of everyone here, you would agree.”_

_“You’re right,” Jyn said, smiling. “I do.”_

* * *

Riding to Falon 12 with Han is an experience Jyn is glad she won’t have to replicate anytime soon. The Millennium Falcon is notoriously unreliable on the best of days, despite Han’s insistence that it’s the best ship in the fleet (“possibly the galaxy!”), and Jyn gets to experience firsthand the sickening lurch of a ship _almost_ making it to hyperspace but at the last minute changing its mind and deciding instead to sputter into uselessness.

“Chewie!” Han barks, as if it’s the Wookie’s fault, and then he dashes back into the bowels of the ship to fix whatever’s broken, leaving Jyn and Chewbacca to exchange a knowing, wordless glance.

That incident aside, they get to Falon 12 in one piece, and Han sets the Falcon down at a landing pad that he then promptly makes Jyn pay for.

“What? Bill the princess,” is his only answer when she gives him an exhausted look.

* * *

As they walk through the streets of the rocky, crumbling spaceport town that Bodhi directed them to, Jyn runs over the plan in her mind.

_Autoturrets on Cyphis. Han, Chewie, and K will set them up as soon as we all arrive._

_I go from Cyphis to the Afflictor. Tell them my fake story._

_They’ll believe me, won’t they? They have to believe me._

_Bodhi will dock, say he was attacked trying to land on Cyphis, answering an Imperial distress call. His ship logs will back him up._

_What then? What then?_

_Chirrut and Baze place the charges. Get back to the ship._

_Detonation._

“You look suspicious,” Han points out. Han, as usual, looks like this is _his_ house and everyone else is just invited. Almost pathologically casual.

“I don’t.”

“You’re a criminal, right?”

“What?”

“What did you do? Smuggling? Weapons? Bodyguard to a Hutt?”

“Partisan. Then whatever work would keep me fed.”

“Right, right. Makes sense. You look it, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Like a criminal?”

“Like someone who’s always on the run.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey, sister. I’m just trying to help. You need to look a little less like you’re here to find a ship to steal.”

“This way,” Jyn says simply, turning down a street that should lead them closer to the Imperial shipyard. A small outpost, Bodhi had said. Barely staffed. They mostly let the town take care of itself. But there are plenty of ships.  

“She’s not listening to me, is she?” Han asks Chewbacca, who growls a response. “Well I expect it from _you_.”

“We need to hurry,” Jyn says, looking back at Han, trying to look warning. Trying to look serious enough that Han might actually listen. But he only scoffs and rolls his eyes. Back on Yavin, trying to calm Bodhi, Jyn had felt more confident about this plan. There had seemed to be more time. Or maybe it was just because Bodhi was so afraid. In any case, her confidence is gone, replaced with urgency.  

_K said it could take up to a day for the assassin to be cleared for infiltration. But that doesn’t mean it will._

“You must not have been much of a thief if you’re _this_ impatient,” Han says.

“You realize he’s being tortured? Right now?” Jyn asks, whirling on Han, stance slightly apart, ready to fight. She knows Han recognizes that, because he takes half a step back and cocks his head slightly to the side as if he’s squaring off against a particularly adorable creature. “We’re working against the clock. Every second wasted is another second we’re not going to have to get him off that destroyer. There’s no time to waste on acting like we aren’t shady characters. Look around you. Half the people on the street are actively pickpocketing each other. We’re here to incite a _riot_. So are you going to help me, or are you going to keep trying to make snappy judgements about what I did before coming here? Because I’m not the only one with a checkered past, asshole.”

“Boy, it is _not_ hard to get under your skin, is it?”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“I’m a multitasker: judging, helping, it’s all the same.”

“I’d like to see a little of the helping before _I_ judge,” Jyn says.

“You got it,” Han replies. And then, abruptly, he swings to the left, grabs a man leaning against a wall, and punches him square in the face.

Bodhi and Han were both right on in their descriptions of Falon 12. It’s almost comically easy to get a fight going. Han’s punch sets off three more fistfights, almost instantly. Blaster fire rings farther down the street. The pickpockets find themselves turned on by their victims. People actively leave the safety of buildings to join in the fun.

There’s something oddly joyful in it. People are whooping loud battle cries as they clash with people they were walking past peacefully only moments before. Han and Jyn and Chewie push through the crowd, taking punches where they can.

For the first time since she woke up to Chirrut telling her Cassian had been captured, maybe even for the first time since Leia told her that Cassian had accepted this mission from Draven, Jyn feels the iron band around her chest, the irritating desire to cry or rage, loosening its hold on her. Every time she swings her truncheon towards some drunkard stumbling in her path, some oafish man trying to catch her off guard, she feels slightly more free of the suffocating fear.

“You know, I didn’t mean _right this second_ ,” she shouts at Han, spinning around, elbowing an assailant in the face with a satisfying crunch.

“No time like the present, right?” Han calls back. Then he lets out a victorious cry and leaps into a knife-wielding Twi’lek.

* * *

Bodhi has to grab her by the back of her worn leather jacket and pull her into a doorway to get her to stop fighting.

The only reason she doesn’t accidentally turn on him is because he loudly shouts, “it’s Bodhi! It’s Bodhi!” over and over again after he first touches her, and she allows herself to be dragged back.

There’s not a lot of room in the narrow space, but they cram out of the way of the melee as much as they can.

“A little early,” he says, breathing heavily, looking rattled.

“Did someone hit you? Where? Who?”

“No, no. I’m fine! Really. Lost Chirrut and Baze, though. They’re having a little too much fun, I think. Glad I left K on the ship. He’d be _really_ in trouble.”

Jyn thinks that she’s hardly the only one who needed an excuse to punch a few people.

“Did you get a chance to look inside the outpost?” she asks.

“Yeah, landed right in there. Hardly any troopers around. There’s a shuttle on one of the landing pads, but they’re loading up supplies right now.”

“How many are there?”

“Four or five, maybe.”

“I can do four or five.”

“Jyn, don’t be…”

“Trust me, I got this.”

“You’re being reckless again!” Bodhi reminds her, sticking out his arm to stop her when she tries to go. “I know we’re in a hurry, but you need to think!”

“How am I supposed to think when he’s up there? In pain. And there’s an assassin on the way to kill him, and the Rebellion isn’t going to do _anything_ to help him? We’re all he’s got, Bodhi!”

“I know! Jyn, I know. But you can’t just storm an Imperial outpost and take on a whole crew. Four or five is still four or five. They only need _one_ good shot to kill you. We need to get the riot to them. Get the riot into the outpost, _then_ take the shuttle. We need to do this right.”

Jyn growls out a curse, but she nods, and Bodhi finally lets her go.

* * *

It turns out that when you’re an attractive woman sitting on the shoulders of an enormous Wookie, chanting “fuck the Empire” while firing a bowcaster into the air, even in the middle of a town-wide brawl you’ll get some attention.

“Not much of a slogan, but I’m beginning to like you!” Han shouts up at her. Jyn, cheeks flushed with adrenaline, can almost take that as the compliment it was meant to be.

The riot turns very quickly into a mob. Blaster fire rings out, Stormtroopers falling under surprise sniper attacks from the rooftops of the surrounding buildings. Anti-Empire sentiment is a powerful thing, and it’s not long before a few ingenious settlers manage to scale the heavy iron walls to open the gates. In a matter of minutes, the compound swells with angry fighters.

Bodhi, Baze, and Chirrut are quick to get back to K-2SO in the cargo ship, avoiding most of the fight (to Baze’s disappointment) and vanishing into the sky. Chewie lets Jyn down from his shoulders with a care she finds touching.

“There,” she says, pointing to the shuttle on the far side of the shipyard. Most of the mob are still moving forward, towards the operations building, but some are starting to wander off to some of the nearby ships, looking hungry, angry, ready for revenge. “We need to move.”

“No arguments here,” Han says, noticing the same thing. He brandishes his pistol and leads the way, picking off some of the Stormtroopers who have managed to avoid getting gunned down by the mob so far. Jyn follows, taking shots where she can, her eyes steady on the shuttle.

The turrets on the operations building roar to life. And Bodhi was right, and Jyn needs to be more careful, but they don’t have _time_ to be careful.

She ignores Han’s warning shout and sprints across the open tarmac as the blaster bolts fire on the mob, fire madly around the outpost, hardly caring who they hit. She narrows her gaze on the shuttle, sees nothing except the shuttle, the open cargo bay, the ramp that leads into it. She’s almost there.

The Imperial officer emerges from within too late for her to effectively stop, and so she doesn’t. She lowers her shoulder instead, turns her run into a _charge_ , into a heave. She and the officer both fly backward into the open cargo bay door, half up the ramp, and she lands with her knee on the man’s chest, knocking the air out of him.

But he’s spry, and his reactions are faster than she would have expected, and he punches her straight in the gut, flipping her off him, striking out quickly, almost before she’s able to dodge out of the way. One of the Stormtroopers outside notices their captain in trouble, and they move up, firing, singeing her shoulder before Han can take them out.

Jyn hardly notices. _Fuck the Empire_ may not have been a great motto, but it’s a hell of a motivator. It repeats over and over in her head as she strikes out at the officer, as she wrestles his blaster pistol from his grasp, as she looks him in the eyes and shoots him.

More troopers converge, but she has the upper hand now, and she ducks behind a bulkhead and returns fire when she’s able, covering Han and Chewbacca once they finally feel safe enough to follow her. Han runs with characteristic drama, yelling at the top of his lungs, and finishes off the final three troopers who were foolhardy enough to try and get back on the ship.

When it’s done, there are five bodies in the shuttle with them.

“You’re crazy. You know that?” Han says as he climbs the ramp into the ship, and it’s more admiring, more respectful, than anything he’s ever said to her.

“Dedicated, I think, is a nicer way of putting it,” Jyn answers, wiping blood from a cut over her eye.

“But not nearly as accurate. Chewie, let’s get this thing back to the Falcon before someone else decides to join the party. And get those bodies out of here.”

“No, leave them,” Jyn says, on a whim. Han gives her an incredulous look. “What better way to sell my story than evidence?”

“Crazy,” Han reminds her, slipping into the pilot’s chair, but he doesn’t argue.

* * *

Jyn’s never been a great pilot, and this shuttle is better flown with two, but she manages without too much trouble to get the ship in the air after Han and Chewie get back on the Falcon. A few stray blaster shots rock the shuttle from the rioting streets below, but it’s nothing to worry about. Only adds to her story, probably. She punches in the coordinates for Cyphis, and is away before the Imperials even notice their ship is stolen, the riot continuing to rage in the streets below.

* * *

Cyphis is a tiny little moon, its strange plantlife giving it a vibrant, beautiful purple color. Jyn stares down at it through the viewport while Bodhi runs through the checklist with Han.

They float there for a while, three ships drifting together.

“Look, kid,” says Han over the radio, but then it’s quiet.

“May the force be with you,” Bodhi says, once enough time has passed for Han’s silence to become almost hilarious. “Chirrut said to say that.”

“Yeah, sure, that,” Han grumbles. “Rook, let’s go plant those turrets. Erso, get a move on.”

“I’ll see you soon, Bodhi,” Jyn says, which sounds too much like a promise that she might not be able to keep. Then she sets course for the Afflictor, entering hyperspace.

_I’m coming, Cassian_ , she thinks, toying with the kyber crystal around her neck. _Just hold on a while longer_.

Holding her breath, finding Chirrut’s prayer running through her mind, she pulls out the officer’s blaster pistol and aims it down at her calf. This will get her to the medbay, at least. The rest is up to Bodhi. Gritting her teeth, she fires.

* * *

“I’m beginning to think that my threat of seeking Vader’s council might not turn out to be as idle as I’d initially hoped.”

Raleigh again. Cassian doesn’t bother to open his eyes. He knows the willful disrespect angers the admiral more than anything else. Then again, _everything_ Cassian does angers him to a degree. Sometimes he thinks about saying something, anything, something witty and dry and absolutely careless. But Raleigh is clearly frustrated, is clearly used to verbal defiance, clearly wants to get a toehold on Cassian’s personality so he can start to tear him apart. So far, all he’s been able to discern is that Cassian sometimes gets weak enough in sleep to call for Jyn.

No, no. He’s past thinking of Jyn as a weakness.

_Given adequate motivation…_

_Jyn, think of Jyn_ , he’ll tell himself when the torture starts. The Rebellion is impossible to imagine. It’s too big to focus on. _Billions_ of lives. The freedom of the galaxy. Noble aims, and they’re motivation enough, most of the time. But when it’s bad, when it’s _really_ bad, those big-picture images that flicker through his mind are formless, are impossible to grasp. They slip through his arms like he’s trying to carry mounds of silk. _Think about what matters_ , Draven told him once, when Cassian was very young. _Given adequate motivation, a person can withstand anything_.

It’s simple enough to imagine her. Simple enough to close his eyes and see her, cling to her memory as a thing that _matters_.

He thought of her as his redemption, once, standing in that elevator on Scarif. He would die, but maybe she could make it off the planet without him. Maybe she could live to see her father’s legacy completed. To see their work finished. He looked down at her and saw something he cared far too deeply about for the amount of time that it had been in his life. He saw _hope_.

It’s that same hope he clings to now. That same feeling. It’s so much more specific than his grand hopes for the Rebellion. So much easier to imagine her, standing close, biting her lip. The smile on her face when she saw that he had come back for her on Kopha. The way her breath stuttered when he kissed her shoulder on Hoth. The way she curled her arm around him, moved his head to her chest, let him rest his burdens on her.

Jyn is anything but a weakness. She might be the only thing keeping him whole.

“Let’s try this again,” Raleigh says, and the droid powers up.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: the promised reunion (half of y'all seem to want her to punch him, half of y'all seem to want her to kiss him, so I'm REAL interested to see what kind of reaction I get)


	4. This is a Rescue. Are You Gonna Help Me or What?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm gonna take a moment to remind you all that I have been updating this series VERY FREQUENTLY, so please do not be too furious about the end of this chapter. But...it was 6,000 words already, and I'm occasionally allowed to be shameless :\
> 
> Also, I gotta tell you, I've never experienced writing anxiety like I did in writing and editing this reunion. So I'm just going to say I'm really, really sorry if it doesn't live up to anyone's hopes or expectations, but I'm sticking with my original story outline as much as I can.
> 
> In all seriousness, you're the best. Reading and responding to the comments is the highlight of my day, and possibly the only reason I'm still alive after turning what was a 9,000 word short story into a (so far) 24,000 word fic in less than a week! So thank you, seriously! Anxiety aside, this has been a lot of fun so far! (Again, please don't hate me too much!)

“Are you worried about Jyn?”

Chirrut’s voice so close to his ear startles Bodhi, and he turns to look over his shoulder at the warrior, who’s standing just outside the cockpit, looking annoyingly smug, as always.

“Of course I’m worried about Jyn. I’m also worried about these turrets.”

“Turrets are fine, kid,” Han barks through the comlink, voice muffled by his mask as he and K-2SO move on to the next location. Bodhi thumbs the intercom, stopping transmission.

“You seem distracted.”

“I’m always distracted.”

“Not true.”

“Okay. Fine. Why don’t you tell me? Am I worried about Jyn?”

“You’re always worried about Jyn.”

Bodhi has to give him that one.

“She’s my friend, and she’s about to do something very dangerous for the sake of _another_ friend, so now there’s _two_ friends in danger, and we’re _also_ going to do something pretty dangerous ourselves… aren’t _you_ worried?”

“Not particularly.”

“Right.”

“Jyn is better at this than anyone I’ve ever met.”

“What, lying?”

“I was going to say ‘improvisation’, but I suppose ‘lying’ works as well.”

“If you want to get semantic.”

“She’s also singularly dedicated.”

“Yeah, but…” a sigh, and Bodhi turns to look at Chirrut again, his face scrunched up in thought in a way that he’s glad Chirrut can’t see, because he knows he looks ridiculous. “That’s not good enough, though, is it?”

“Isn’t faith good enough?”

“That’s different.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“I believe in her. I believe in both of them, sure. But I believed in the Empire, too. I believed that I would be helping people. I believed that Galen would be all right if I was able to deliver the message. I believed that what we did on Scarif would be enough to save the Rebellion, and then they went and blew up Alderaan anyway. I believed the Council would _help_ us when we wanted to go to Scarif, and instead they told us they thought Galen was a traitor, and they wanted to give up the whole thing. I’d say I’m fifty-fifty on faith right now. And what if this is one of the times where it doesn’t work out? Losing Jyn. Losing Cassian. What are we supposed to do then? I mean honestly, that’s- that’s a real question. I don’t know what we’re supposed to do.”

Chirrut smiles sadly.

“You sound a little like Baze,” he says.

“Only he’s with about one-fourth as many words?”

“More like one-eighth. But I understand what you’re saying, Bodhi. Faith isn’t easy. And there are a lot of things that could go wrong. But Jyn hasn’t let me down before, and I know that she wants more than anything to have all of us safe and whole again. She won’t let anything stop her. Trust her, Bodhi. Trust her like she will be trusting you to be there when she and Cassian are ready to go.”

“What if she doesn’t…” he starts, swallowing thickly. Chirrut lets him work through it, lets him consider. “What if they don’t make it? What if we’re just waiting there, and they don’t come, and we have to leave?”

“You can’t let your fear rule you like this, Bodhi,” Chirrut says, and he squeezes his shoulder tight.

“Easier said than done,” Bodhi reminds him, and his voice is more sour, darker, more bitter than he’d like.

* * *

Unlike Bodhi, Jyn is a good liar. She has always been a good liar. She’s good at thinking on her feet, too. Improvising is a survival skill that you had to learn quickly in the Partisans, and Jyn had the benefit of being taught since she was very young. She has an intrinsic, bone deep fear of the Empire that hones her abilities, that makes her quicker than usual, that makes it easy for her to talk her way around them.

Even still, sitting in an interrogation room with an Imperial officer is not a comfortable experience.

Saw, when she was younger, wanted to make sure that she had the tools to survive, which was why he taught her how go fight, why he worked her so hard, why he never gave her any breaks or leeway when she whined or cried.

“The enemy doesn’t care how young you are,” he would say, crouched down in front of her, bringing himself to her level, wiping her tears with a gentleness that seemed at odds with his words until she recognized that he was only harsh because he loved her (it took years for that to set in). “They only see a Rebel. They see a problem. They’ll kill you as easily as they’ll kill me. And so what can you do?”

“Make sure they underestimate me.”

“That’s right, my sweet. You make sure they underestimate you.”

People _would_ underestimate her. That was their weakness. Their mistake. They would look at her and see just another little girl. Someone to be silenced, discarded, forgotten. Saw wanted to make certain that she was a little girl who would surprise them. That perceived weakness, that perceived vulnerability, could be as much a weapon as any knife or truncheon or blaster he ever taught her to use.

“If you can talk your way out of something, if you can open those eyes wide and make them feel sadness or pity or some protective instinct, do it. We use the tools we are given. You have a face that will make them want to protect you. Never hesitate to use it.”

* * *

“We were attacked,” Jyn says, her voice dripping with emotion. She pushes her hair out of her eyes, knowingly smearing herself with blood from trembling, cold hands. “He was dying, the officer, and he told me...he gave me the coordinates. I wasn’t even supposed to be with them, they just…they saved me. And I thought…I needed to finish his mission.”

The Imperial admiral sitting across the table from her looks suitably sympathetic, she thinks, while maintaining a cool facade of typically imperious calm. She wonders if he’s also in charge of Cassian’s interrogation, and she has to clench her fingers into fists to keep from strangling him here in this room.

“Why don’t you back up a bit, miss,” he says. “You say you were on the purple moon. Which moon is that?”

“The officer called it Cyphis.”

“In the Cluster?” the admiral asks, and Jyn nods. “What were you doing there in the first place?”

“I wasn’t. I mean, I was on Falon 12. I’m- I’m sorry, I think I should back up even further? I…this has all been…”

The admiral reaches out, stills her trembling fingers with his own. He gives her a soft, understanding smile.

Jyn notices that it doesn’t reach his eyes. He’s not suspicious, she doesn’t think, but he’s not nearly as good at pretending to be a kind man as he thinks he is.

He’s probably better at wrenching the truth from people with violence. With pain. She clings to his fingers as if she doesn’t want to break them for what he may have been doing to Cassian.

“I understand,” the admiral says. “But you’re safe now.”

“I was on Falon 12. I’m…my father owned a shop there. Since he died, I’ve been taking odd jobs for the Imperial outpost. Deliveries, that sort of thing. I was on post when suddenly a riot broke out in the streets. That’s not unusual. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Falon 12.”

“No, but I’ve read the reports.”

His tone implies that he knows something already of the riot Jyn instigated. Hopefully the woman riding on the shoulders of the Wookie didn’t gather _that_ much attention.

“The riots don’t usually make it to the outpost, but it did this time. Your people were unprepared for attack. They were overwhelmed. I was trying to help, but there were just so many of them. Your officer made the choice to take off and abandon the post. He said he had vital information for the Empire and needed to get here.”

The officer nods, brow furrowed. Jyn can tell that he knows about the shuttle vanishing from Falon 12, and that he’s tying the events together. It’s lessening his suspicion of her, but she has to be careful. Lying is a delicate art. Too much detail is obvious.

“Why did he take you with them?”

“I saved the officer, sir. I shot down a rebel who was going to throw a grenade at the ship. In the chaos, he grabbed me, took me with them. I guess he figured he’d return the favor. They offered to put me down on another part of the moon, but I thought...I can’t go back there. The one I saved, he was saying I would make a good Stormtrooper. You need more help, I can help. Got nothing to lose, anyway.”

“All right,” the admiral says, soothingly. The sympathy is even stronger now, but it still doesn’t show in his eyes. Cold. Impassive. Jyn doesn’t want to do too much, but she lets her eyes begin to water. Just enough that she’ll appear to be trying hard to stay strong.

“We flew to the moon because of whatever the officer found out. He said we were just going to check it out and then leave, head here, but then he landed the ship. I don’t know why. I was in the back, but I heard them arguing. And a team of them went out to investigate. The pilot said there was a rebel stronghold. They were wearing respirators, oxygen. One of the other troopers was angry, said it was unnecessary.  Said not even the rebels were stupid enough to build a base on a toxic planet.”

She weaves the story carefully, slowly, as if reconstructing events that shock had made fuzzy. Talks of the troopers dragging their dying comrades into the shuttle before being shot themselves. Talks of this brave officer taking off before dying of his wounds, leaving her alone in a shuttle filled with bodies. The admiral watches her, reads her, looking at her every micro-expression, but Jyn knows that he won’t find anything. There’s nothing to find. She sees the lie play out behind her eyelids. She lets it become truth, for just a moment.

A careful investigation will reveal her as a liar, of course. It will reveal that no one tried to administer aid to the officer. It will probably reveal that her defensive wounds match too closely with his to be coincidence. But if she’s here long enough for a thorough investigation to be carried out, she’s already dead.

When she’s finished with her story, when she shows the admiral the blaster burn on her leg, he calls someone to lead her to the Medbay.

“I’m Admiral Raleigh,” he says to her, holding out his hand to shake. She pretends to notice the blood on her hands, curling her fingers back to her sides so she won’t dirty his. She gives him a hopefully disarming, innocent smile.

“Karo,” she says.

“Let’s get you some medical attention, Karo. I’ll leave you in good hands. Maybe later, when you’re feeling a bit better, we can go over your answers again.”

There’s _something_ in the way he says that, and she knows.

He’s the one in charge of Cassian’s interrogation.

_I could kill him right now_.

But it wouldn’t do anything.

_Let them underestimate you_ , Saw says.

“Thank you so much, admiral,” she says, bowing low, tears dripping past her eyelashes. “You’ve been very kind. Thank you.”

She follows the Stormtrooper that the admiral pairs her with. She keeps her eyes ahead of her, trying not to look too curious, trying not to look like she’s reading the signs as they pass by them. They pass the door to the detention area, but it’s closed. She can’t see anything inside. She presses the transponder hidden on the underside of her belt, once.

* * *

“The signal,” Bodhi says, looking sick. “Get ready.”

Chirrut heads back into the main hold of the ship, calling for Baze. Baze will get the two of them into the small smuggler’s hold. It will hide them from any sweeps. It will show Bodhi as alone.

_Just like every other cargo run you’ve ever done,_ Bodhi thinks to himself. _Except this time I’m a traitor. Maybe don’t think about that part._

He thumbs the intercom back on.

“Jyn signaled,” he says. “We’re off. Take care of K, will you?”

“Oh, sure. Can’t wait to be stuck on a ship with _this_ thing for a few hours,” Han says. “Between your droid and Erso’s shit, you’re starting to take up an awful lot of room on the Falcon. Might have to start charging you for it.”

“Bye,” Bodhi says, not knowing what to say to that, and he cuts communication.

He hears the loud thud of the floorpiece sliding back into place, Baze and Chirrut crammed into the small compartment.

There’s nothing else to do. Nothing else to wait for. One more deep breath, and Bodhi punches it.

* * *

“I had an interesting conversation with a survivor of one of your rebel attacks,” says Raleigh in the door to his cell. Cassian doesn’t think he could open his eyes if he tried. His eyelids feel heavy, his stomach empty, his head dangerously light. He has trouble focusing after long sessions. If he opens his eyes, more often than not, his vision swims, his stomach heaves.

“He’s awake,” says the voice of the officer who oversaw the last interrogation. Probably in response to a questioning look from Raleigh. One of the only small pleasures still remaining to Cassian is that Raleigh is increasingly insecure that Cassian isn’t even listening to him anymore.

“The survivor came from the moon of Cyphis. She says one of our ships was attacked by a rebel outpost there. A toxic moon. An impressive place for a hiding spot. I admit I wasn’t expecting such ingenuity from your people.”

_Cyphis? There’s no outpost on Cyphis. The council shot down the idea years ago_.

There has to be a reason that Raleigh is telling him this. Is he trying to trick him into a reaction?

The pain, the impact, comes so suddenly that Cassian is actually startled into attempting a defensive reaction, which does nothing but wrench his shoulders when he forgets how tightly they’re bound to the wall. Raleigh is standing over him, breathing hard, _real_ anger on his face. His fist is clenched, one knuckle split. Cassian almost wants to laugh. The asshole _punched_ him.

For the first time since they’ve met, Cassian meets Raleigh’s eyes. Raleigh will see whatever he wants to see in this expression. He knows how blank and unreadable it is. He knows it will infuriate Raleigh, who’s teetering on the edge of explosive rage, trying to rein himself back in.

“You will watch your rebel stronghold _burn_ ,” Raleigh tells him, teeth clenched against more anger. Cassian stares at him for as long as he has to, until Raleigh gives up, turns away, leaves Cassian in the dark again.

Something isn’t right. Cassian shifts, sits up, stifles a groan as he stands for the first time in what has probably been days. His knees buckle, but he shores himself up against the wall, forces himself to try again.

_There is no outpost on Cyphis. Cyphis disrupts long-range communications. It interferes even with short-range communications sometimes. The information is false. Someone wants Afflictor close to Cyphis._

The woman. The survivor. The assassin?

Cassian knows Draven would want him to be stronger, but he can’t help the sigh of relief. It will be over soon. But he wants to be on his feet when death comes for him.

_I should not have wasted our time_ , he thinks. Tries to remember the softness of her hair, the skin of her stomach under his hand, her eyes looking up at him. These memories will be gone, soon. Only she will carry any part of them. _Maybe this is for the best. Maybe this way I’ll be a fond memory, and not some future regret. I would only have let you down eventually._

* * *

Jyn hates the nurse in the medbay possibly even more than the soft-handed admiral with the dead eyes. At least Raleigh is easy to read. Easy to understand. He’s a man who knows what side he’s on, a man who is where he is because he wants power. He _likes_ inflicting pain.

This pale, warm woman, who introduces herself as Sawma and wears her blonde hair cut short, wears her lips deep red, smiles with every syllable. She is so infused with deceptive friendliness that Jyn wants to knock her teeth out for even trying.

_Don’t you know who you work for?_ She would ask, if she let her emotions get the better of her. _Don’t you know who you_ are _?_

“Oh, this doesn’t look so bad!” Sawma says, entirely too chipper. “Awful close range, though! Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have a bacta tank?”

“I don’t care about the scar,” Jyn answers. “A patch is fine.”

Sawma nods, gives her a pat on the shoulder like she’s being such a brave girl. It’s condescending rather than friendly, but that might just be because Jyn already hates this woman so much.

The bacta is applied liberally, which makes Jyn ache for all the people back in the fleet, having to put up with hurts that this blaster wound wouldn’t even rank with, because bacta shortages make waste irresponsible. While she works, the nurse talks, asks questions, and Jyn forces herself to answer with a smile as if Sawma’s sweet, unassuming nature is _working_.

She wonders if Sawma was ever called into Cassian’s cell to keep him from dying before Raleigh was done with him.

“How’d you end up getting shot like this, anyhow?” Sawma asks. It’s a perfectly friendly, perfectly innocent question, but Jyn knows better. It’s part two of her interrogation. Raleigh will be asking Sawma for details later.

Hopefully he won’t get the chance to ask until she and Cassian are long gone, but that doesn’t mean Jyn isn’t going to answer as best as she can.

“Got in a scrap with a rebel,” she admits. “It was stupid. He grabbed my blaster.” _Explaining why the blaster burn matches the Imperial-issue weapon I shot myself with_. “I shouldn’t have tried to attack him like that, but…I didn’t think. He was trying to kill the officer. I don’t even know the officer’s _name_.”

“His body was brought in with you. I can find out for you, if you’d like,” Sawma offers, pressing a sympathetic hand to the top of Jyn’s hair. She nods, letting out a watery laugh.

“Thank you. He saved my life. I should at least know whose spirit I’m thanking.”

Sawma heads off to find the information, drawing the privacy curtain around Jyn’s bed, which Jyn thanks her for. That’s not even entirely insincere; she really _is_ glad.

She feels like a kid again, like a scavenger not knowing where the next supplies will come from, reacting with a hoarding instinct that saved her from many hungry nights when she was young. She rifles through the drawers at her bedside. Bacta patches, unopened. Medigel. Stimshots (these last make her thank the force in a wondering, shaky breath). She stuffs everything she can into her toolbelt, into her vest, into every pocket she has. She doesn’t know what help Cassian will need once she finds him, so she takes whatever she can carry.

That finished, she rests back in the bed they’ve provided her, her pant leg rolled up, feigning relaxation.

All there is to do now is wait.

* * *

Bodhi _is_ a bad liar. That’s true. But he’s been a cargo pilot for so long, and he knows exactly what to say.

He tries not to think of it as lying. That’s the key. And he tries to just babble, keep up conversation. Maybe it’s more suspicious. He can’t tell. Maybe it’s just annoying. He tells the troopers where he was _supposed_ to be going, tells the troopers about answering the distress call on Cyphis.

“We’ve heard reports of rebel activity in that area,” says an officer, looking Bodhi over with interest, and Bodhi knows that at least Leia did what she was supposed to do: rumors, spread amongst contacts.

“Did you read Raleigh’s report? That girl from the shuttle also mentioned the moon,” says one of the Stormtroopers, and so that’s _Jyn’s_ part down too. Bodhi tries not to look too relieved.

“There were rebels, all right,” he says. “I didn’t get a look at their base, but I took some fire from the ground. Lucky I didn’t land.”

“Yeah, you said it. Shuttle came in with five dead. You’d have been destroyed. Stay here, will you? We’ll file the report. Might need you to confirm some details.”

“Yeah, of course,” Bodhi says. Trying, again, not to sound too relieved. He sits back down in his chair, watches the Imperials leave.

When they’re gone, he goes over to the spot in the floor he knows conceals the door. He thumps on it, once, with his fist, and Baze pushes the floor aside.

“Any problems?” he asks. Bodhi shakes his head. “Good job, little brother.”

Bodhi tries to pretend that doesn’t affect him as much as it does.

“Do you have the bomb?” he asks. Baze nods. He and Chirrut both look smaller, less intimidating, less like themselves in their Imperial maintenance outfits, but that’s good. It will help them blend in.

“You’ll be okay here, on your own,” Chirrut says. It sounds like it should be a question, even though Bodh is pretty sure it isn’t.

He says, “yeah” anyway. Follows it up with, “be careful.”

“We always are,” Chirrut says.

“ _I_ always am,” Baze corrects him, and he gives Bodhi a small smile before he goes.

Bodhi goes back to the cockpit and fires up the scanner. Hopefully, Cyphis is considered an interesting enough target. They’ll make the jump, pick up the Falcon on the scanner. Send ships down to investigate.

_Hopefully_. That might just be the scariest part of all this.

* * *

Baze follows Bodhi’s instructions exactly. He and Chirrut keep their heads down, carry the cargo box between them, moving as if they know exactly where they’re going. No one stops them. No one even looks at them. Bodhi was right that they would be invisible if they were in maintenance uniforms. Chirrut seems annoyed by the lack of chances to fight, but he’s relieved enough when they reach the correct room.

Planting the charges is easy. They shove the cargo box with a pile of other equipment in one corner. Baze opens it up, activates the remote detonator. Closes the box again.

“Here. Grab this one.” He guides Chirrut to another, identical cargo box, this one filled with tools he doesn’t recognize.

“Are you sure we can’t fight a _few_ people?” Chirrut asks, his voice needling and teasing, exactly the voice he knows Baze is weakest for.

“Stop it.”

“Why, I thought you would surely be on my side. You never pass up an opportunity to kill an Imperial.”

“I do when we’re surrounded by them. You’d have to kill a thousand to make a dent. And it wouldn’t be a very big dent.”

“When you were younger, you’d have killed a thousand without blinking.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“I’m _admiring_.”

“Stop it.”

Chirrut’s chuckle follows Baze out into the hallway, and Baze stamps down his reflexive smile.

“I know what you’re doing,” he murmurs. His voice is quiet, practically nothing, but he knows Chirrut will hear it. “And it won’t work. I’m still worried.”

“Of course you are,” Chirrut murmurs. He follows Baze unquestioningly, hands wrapped around the box, letting Baze lead him back toward the ship. “I am too.”

The quiet admittance makes Baze falter a bit. Chirrut doesn’t admit to worry often. But it’s too late to do anything about it now. They’ve done their part.

* * *

It’s hard to discern movement on a ship this size. Are they going to the moon? Did they believe her story, in conjunction with the rumors they had already heard and the information from Bodhi? The medbay is quiet, and anything could be happening out there, which means Jyn has to be _ready_ for anything.

Admiral Raleigh will come back for her eventually. Sawma will resume her questioning. The assassin will arrive. Bodhi won’t hit the detonator until he’s sure they’ve jumped to Cyphis, because otherwise the Afflictor will have outside help in a matter of minutes, and then they’re truly fucked. But what if they don’t go to Cyphis at all? What if Raleigh is smarter than Jyn thinks? What if he’s already determined who she is?

There are a hundred reasons for Jyn to be nervous, and she goes through them as she sits there on her bed.

Finally, _finally_ , chaos.

The explosion is dull, muffled. _Three levels up, two lefts, one right from here_ , Jyn thinks as she scrambles to her feet, pretending to react with concern, the way everyone else here is.

“What was that?” Sawma asks one of her aides.

A larger explosion. A reactive explosion, set off by the first. The lights flicker, sputter, and die. The loud, ever present churning of the billions of credits of technology, engines, mechanics, it all grinds to a near-silent halt, followed by shouting, panic.

When Jyn moves, it’s largely instinct. A cutter tool has been left on the table beside her bed, and she grabs it before the red emergency lights even kick on. The doctors and patients are panicking, yelling at each other about the ship being disabled. The emergency power allows the doors to open, allows the oxygen to keep pumping, allows a little bit of light, but everything is dim enough that Jyn is able to slip out easily.

She sticks to the shadows until she spots a good target. A Stormtrooper, hitting uselessly at a wall panel, trying to figure out how to open it. No one else around. Running footsteps audible a few halls away, but nothing close. Jyn slips up behind them, and she jams the cutting tool between the hard plates of the armor, penetrating the soft skin of the trooper’s neck.

The armor is a bit too big for her, but it’s workable, and she just needs it to get close to the officer working the detention center without arousing suspicion. She shoves the dead man into the darkest possible corner, replaces her cutter tool with his blaster rifle, and now she feels confident. The hardest part is over.

_You have maybe a half hour, maybe a little longer, before they can power up_ , Bodhi told her. _Depending on how good their maintenance people are and how much damage the bomb actually does. And any longer than that might be a problem, anyway. The Destroyer will start to drift._

She keeps that in mind. Speeds up a little, jogging back toward where she saw the door to the detention area.

It’s gratifying that Bodhi was right about everything. She navigates easily, having spent all her free time memorizing the schematics, the labels scrawled on in Bodhi’s uncertain writing. She falls in with a platoon of troopers heading in her direction, all of them trying to maintain some semblance of order while racing along to whatever duty station they’re supposed to be at. She can hear shouting, somewhere distant, but she can’t let herself be distracted. She can’t let herself wonder or worry that her friends are in trouble. This is _her_ part of the job, and it’s what she’s going to focus on.

At the entry to the detention area, she slides in, armor clanking, stumbling a little in the bulky suit, and rounds the corner already with her excuses on the tip of her tongue, but there’s no one there.

Bodhi was very clear: there would be someone at the console.

She doesn’t trust her eyes at first. She takes a second look, difficult through the helmet.

“Hello?” she asks, her voice quiet. Too hesitant. But no one answers. No darkly-dressed officer steps out of the shadows with a question or an accusation. Nothing.

The armor makes too much noise in the silence of the cells, and it makes her nervous. She ducks into the utility closet to take it off.

As she’s dropping the last piece to the ground, she hears it thud not against the metal floor but against something else. Something soft.

Eyes adjusting slowly, she looks down, fingers shaking against her pockets, finally withdrawing with her small repair light clutched in her grip.

When she flips it on, she’s met with the unseeing stare of a dead Imperial officer.

There’s no time for shock. No time for wonder. She knows exactly what this is.

_The assassin_. _They’re here._

Jyn grabs her blaster and races back out to the console. Now that she knows, now that she understands, she can see the blood that’s splashed on the dead monitors and keys, disguised only slightly by the red glare of the emergency power.

She looks up, straight into the pitch dark hall of doors that lead to identical cells, and she has no idea what’s waiting. But there’s no time, and so she creeps forward.

* * *

“You look like shit,” the man in the doorway says. “Guess you know why I’m here.”

Cassian _does_ know why Thane is here.

He nearly sags with relief, but he’s determined to stay on his feet. Pride, maybe. Instilled in him by Draven. On his feet. He needs to be on his feet.

“You could’ve been faster,” he says. His voice sounds terrible. Gritted like sand, like gravel. Thane winces with sympathy.

“Had to do it right. You know how it is. Sorry, but I gotta ask: what did you give them?”

Cassian lets out a laugh that hardly sounds human. Bitter, almost angry, though he doesn’t really feel either of those things.

“Do I look like I gave them anything?” he wonders. Thane’s smile is small, a little sad.

“No,” he admits. “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. More machine than your droid. That’s what Draven said once, and I think it fits. That’s a compliment.”

“Let’s get this over with,” Cassian sighs, because it doesn’t _sound_ like a compliment. Not really. It doesn’t feel like something to be proud of now, at the end. “You’ll take messages?”

“Least I can do. Who for?”

“K. My team. Jyn.”

“Not Draven?”

They both huff out identical, world-weary laughs at that.

“No,” Cassian says.

“All right.”

Thane hears something in the hallway that Cassian doesn’t catch, because he turns and squints against the darkness.

“Don’t move,” says the voice.

Calm and level, cool and assured. Imperial, Cassian would have assumed once, the Coruscant accent strong. But it’s not, it can’t be, it’s her.

“Jyn?” he murmurs, and Thane sighs, his shoulders rolling forward, his hands twitching upwards in surrender. Cassian recognizes the move; Thane shifted his weight, shifted his throwing knife down from his elbow to his wrist. “Thane, stop! _Jyn_?”

“It’s me, Cassian! Don’t worry, I see it. Drop the knife, asshole.”

Her voice, echoing, as if she’s not really here. Cassian’s only sure she _is_ because he doesn’t think he’s so far gone that he’s started hallucinating. _Still_. He strains forward, trying to get a look at her, needing to _see_ her. Feeling an intense panic that he’s not sure how to describe. His hands stuck like his, his whole body stuck like this. He’s helpless, and she’s here, and he’s terrified.

“You _are_ her, aren’t you?” Thane asks, lowering his hands. “Erso, right?”

“Yeah. Back up. I want to see him.”

“I’m not…” Thane sighs, relents, takes a few steps back, disappears from the doorway.

* * *

Jyn doesn’t trust the assassin. _Obviously._ He may be a friend, but he’s here to kill Cassian, and Jyn knows how these spies get about their _orders_. She watches him carefully as he backs away, her finger millimeters from the trigger. He goes easily enough. Drops the knife on the ground. Kicks it toward her without being asked. She picks it up and tucks it into her belt, and only then does she take the final few steps to the cell to look in on Cassian.

The red emergency lighting makes everyone look haunted, bare, but he looks _terrible._ His hands are cuffed, chained to the wall behind and above him, giving him little room for movement. He’s hunched with an exhaustion that tells her he has been kept this way, intentionally in severe discomfort, for days. He always looks tired, always looks like he’s overdue a full week of sleep, but it’s worse now, edged with pain.

She can’t see any pressing physical injuries, but she knows how the Empire tortures. She knows it’s injected pain drugs and electricity so you can’t see the damage being done. It’s interrupted sleep cycles and barely any food. Psychological manipulation. It’s enough to drive a person mad. It’s _designed_ to drive a person mad.

She wants to cry, seeing him. She wants to rage at him for putting himself through this for _Draven_ , for a man who sent a killer to ensure his silence when he knew full well Jyn would have done anything to save him.

“You okay?” she asks, a profoundly stupid question, but Cassian only nods, closes his eyes, breathes out a quiet sigh that’s more exhausted sob than anything else. Her whole body longs to go to him, comfort him, promise him he’s going to be all right, but she can’t. She needs to be on her guard, and they need to _go_. She looks back at the assassin, Thane, still standing far enough back for comfort. “We brought a ship.”

“You’re expecting to extract?”

“Why do you think the lights are out?” Jyn asks, her laugh a bit high pitched, desperate. “This is a rescue. Are you gonna help me or what?”

“Jyn. How did you even...” Cassian asks, voice weak, and one corner of Jyn’s mouth lifts in a small smile.

“You didn’t _really_ think we would stand by and do nothing? You’re lucky Leia likes you. She told us where you were being held.”

Cassian lets out a tired laugh at that, leaning his head back against the wall.

“A rescue,” he says.

“Are you surprised?”

“A little. Finished composing my last words.”

“Well, now you’ll have them ready for when the time comes.”

“ _I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have wasted our time_. That’s what it was going to be. My message for you.”

It’s important to him that she hear this now, she realizes. It has a feeling of _just in case._ She’s not surprised that he has spent this time dwelling on this, on them, on _her._ She knows what it’s like, after all. She knows how important it is to have _something_ to cling to. She also can’t say she’s surprised he’s still thinking he’s not making it out of here. Still thinking she’d come all this way just to leave him behind if things got tough.

(Cassian isn’t sure _what_ he thinks. He might not be thinking anything. The world spins around him, unfocused, blurry. Sickening. But he can see her. She’s here. He wishes she would come closer. Wishes she would touch him, so he’d know for sure).

“Then let’s not waste any more of our time, yeah?” she says pointedly. “Just hang in there. We’ll get you out.” She glances back at the assassin. “Do you have something I can use to unlock his cuffs?”

“Yeah,” the assassin says, heaving a frustrated sigh. “I got something.” He pulls a tool of some kind out of his belt and passes it over. Jyn turns the lockpicking device over in her hand, examining it as she steps into Cassian’s cell. She’s never used one like it before, but she understands how it works. Perks of being a petty thief. The assassin doesn’t seem very confident. He follows her, stands beside her, looks down at her, glaring. “You better have a foolproof way off this ship.”

“Of course I...” Jyn starts to say, half-laughing, offended.

She should have shot him when she came around the corner. Saw, wherever he is, is raging. She got distracted, got weak for a moment, thinking of the positions being reversed, thinking of Cassian trying to help the Rebellion, just doing what he thought was the right thing to do, standing outside someone’s cell, taking their last words before ending their life.

But not every spy is Cassian. Not every man is good.

“I’m sorry,” this one says. “I have my orders.”

Jyn notices, then, that his blaster pistol is in his hand.

“Thane, no!” Cassian yells, his chains rattling as he strains forward.

But Thane doesn’t look away from Jyn’s eyes, locked on his. He pulls the trigger twice, takes two shots, thudding directly into Jyn’s stomach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My internal monologue in deciding to end this chapter here was something like "they're gonna be REAL mad at you. They're gonna stop reading. This is a bad idea....But if they KEEP reading, they'll hate you even MORE by the end of this story, so you might as well do it anyway"
> 
> (no but seriously I'll probably update tomorrow, please don't stop reading)


	5. Didn't Think I'd Come Unprepared, Did You?

Cassian’s mind is red.

Anger. Panic. _Pain_. Surprising, confusing, _physical_ pain, low in his gut, as if he is the one who has been shot, when he sees Jyn hit the back wall of his cell. He pulls himself toward her, unthinking, needing to _help_ her, but he’s stuck, he’s still stuck here. He can’t do anything.

He’s yelling something he’s not even sure of, using every fiber of energy left in him to pull his arms down, trying to loosen the chains from the ceiling, screaming at Thane as Jyn struggles to stay standing against the wall, just out of Cassian’s reach, her hand pressed to her stomach. She looks surprised, as if she can’t quite believe it.

Thane looks surprised, too. Not at what he’s done, but at Cassian’s fury.

“You know how this works,” he says, calm, over Cassian’s yelling. “Can’t take the risk. You’ll be dead in moments, anyway, right? Stop it. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

_You’re embarrassing yourself, Andor._ Draven’s words. Cassian was eleven.

Cassian is sure he can tear these chains free if he tries hard enough. Sure he can wrap them around Thane’s neck and squeeze the life from him.

“ _Andor_!” Thane yells.

* * *

When Jyn is injured, when she’s hurt like this, time seems to slow down. It narrows in on the pain, her whole existence pinpointed. The pain of the blaster shots to her stomach is something new, something worse, in part because she’s so angry that she allowed it to happen at all.

Thane is raising his pistol, pointing it at Cassian this time. Cassian, who’s still pulling at his chains, practically hanging from them, his words furious and nonsensical to Jyn, his hair hanging in his face, his clothes in a disarray, looking less blank, less put together, than Jyn has ever seen him.

They’re making too much noise. The gunshots. The shouting. They’ll draw attention soon enough, and they need to be _quiet_ , because they can still get out of here.

_We can still get out of here._

Time speeds back up, the shock and fear evaporating. The pain turns to adrenaline, turns to focus.

The knife in her belt, Thane’s knife. She pulls it out, pushes off the wall. It hurts, hurts in a way that makes her want to curl into herself, but she doesn’t.

_On your feet_ , Saw’s voice says.

She swallows down the pain, grips the knife tight in one hand, and she charges.

She’s quick, even injured, spry and lethal. These are things she knows about herself. Thane will be quick, too. She knows that because she’s seen Cassian in action, and she knows that Thane has received the same training. She just has to be faster.

Faster. With two blaster shots in her stomach.

_That’ll be easy._ Baze’s voice this time.

She leads with her foot, kicking Thane back out into the hallway, turning her kick into a spin, at the end of which she drives the knife down low, slicing through the skin of his stomach, digging deep. Thane cries out, and she shoves him, her forearm up against his throat, her knee coming up to his gut, pushing him against the door on the other side of the hall. His pistol clatters away down the hall.

It’s a good start. But he was always going to find his footing eventually.

He throws her back, and she loses her balance, tripping on the slightly raised grate on the hallway floor – Imperial designs are so _kriffing_ dramatic – sending her half-sliding back into Cassian’s cell.

Thane comes at her, swinging, and she scrambles back, still clinging to his bloody knife, waiting for the right moment.

But Thane gets too close, and Cassian heaves himself up by the chains, pulls his knees up, and kicks Thane square in the chest with both feet.

Thane sprawls back, trips, head cracking against the metal grate, and Jyn wastes no more time, following him into the hall. Cassian shouts a warning, and Jyn dodges aside as Thane tries to grab at her, staggering to his feet more quickly than she thought he would. She knees him again, sending him a few steps back, but he grabs for her.

A smart move. Jyn’s small size is one of her greatest strengths, allowing her to duck and dodge and use other peoples’ size against them, but good assailants know to get a hand on her, to get her close enough that she can’t weave out of the way of the hard punches that can bring her down.

Still. She’s not out of tricks yet.

She lets him pull her in, but she jerks away from a punch he levels at her stomach, catching most of it on her side. Still painful, still dragging a cry from her lips, but it’s distraction as much as it is reaction, because then she can stab at him again, using the knife to push him back, to force him backward down the hall, finally following him, toppling with him when he falls to the ground.

It’s darker out here than it was in the cell, the emergency lights from the end of the hall so far away, and Jyn isn’t sure where her arm ends and his body begins, but she refuses to relinquish her hold. He’s scrambling for something, breath harsh against her, and she realizes a moment too late that it’s his blaster. Her hand comes up in time to drive his arm up, and the shot whizzes straight over her head, thunks into the ceiling as he flips her, slams her into the ground, pins her on her back with a hoarse, angry cry that echoes her pained one.

She abandons the knife in his gut, uses both hands to hang on to the pistol as he tries to lower it to her.

It’s the only chance she has.

Her hands and his hands are slippery with blood, are numbing with cold, and her heartbeat and breathing both rattle in her ear like a rallying cry. Cassian is still yelling, still desperately trying to free himself, but he sounds distant, faded somehow, as if they’re more than just a few doorways away.

Thane manages to pull back enough to punch her in the stomach, and then her blaster wounds are aflame, but she uses the pain. She lets it infuriate her. She releases the pistol with one hand, and she grabs the knife in his stomach, and she _twists_ it, and she pulls it up…

Thane’s gasp of pain is surprisingly quiet. Surprisingly soft. She _hates_ it, but she uses the moment to grab the blaster.

_He isn’t Cassian. This isn’t Cassian_ , she reminds herself. _He did this. He didn’t have to. He didn’t have to follow orders_. _He didn’t have to_ do _this._

And she twists the blaster up, points it at his chest, and she doesn’t give him a chance to recover. She pulls the trigger. And Thane drops, his weight dead on top of her.

* * *

The world tilts when the blaster fire lights up the dark hallway beyond Cassian’s cell.

It’s the torture. The fear. The certainty that he’s lost her.

But no, no, the world is _really_ tilting. His feet slide on the floor, losing purchase, pulling him toward the door. Not a lot, but gradually. Gradually enough that he knows it’s real.

The Afflictor is disabled, and now it’s drifting.

The footsteps in the hallway tell him that at least one of them is still alive, and he struggles to stand as much as he can, eyes begging the darkness to reveal Jyn and not Thane still standing at the end of this.

And yet when it _is_ Jyn, when she limps around the corner, both hands stained red, one arm clenched around her stomach like she’s holding it together, her face pale and expression wavering, he feels sick all over again.

“ _Jyn_ ,” he manages to say, and there’s apology and promise in his voice. _I’d do_ anything _if I could. But I can’t. I can’t help you._ She keeps coming, struggling a bit to stay up, and he’s not sure if it’s the injury or the slight tilt of the world around them.

Then he sees that she’s got something, gripped in one hand. The lockpick. He breathes out her name, and Jyn hauls herself up to stand on the bench so she can better reach his hands, letting the wall take her weight as she struggles with it. He helps her as best as he can, though it’s not much: he wedges his shoulder into her thighs to keep her standing.

Finally, with a clanking sound he almost can’t believe, the cuffs are gone.

He can hardly feel his fingers, can hardly feel anything except the roaring pain in his arms as he lowers them for the first time in days, but this isn’t the time to be focused on that. He forces them to obey him, clumsily catching Jyn about the waist, putting his whole body into supporting her, helping her to sit, leaning against the wall.

“Jyn,” he says, her name like a prayer, and she breathes out a shaky response that sounds like _fuck_ and probably is. She turns into him, leans into him, her breath catching, eyes asking him for help. She’s fumbling with her utility belt, her fingers blood-slick and ungainly on one of the compartments, and his own are frozen with days of forced inaction, but he helps her as best as he can, and together they pry it open. Cassian’s breath stops short when he sees the medical supplies stuffed within. They burst out, scattering on the floor. He very nearly laughs, and she turns a smile on him that gets him breathing again.

“Didn’t think I’d come unprepared, did you?” she asks. And it’s the wrong time, but it’s never going to be the right time, is it? And there a million words he needs to say but there’s no time to say them. And so he crosses the gap between them, mere centimeters anyway, and he presses his lips to hers.

It’s short. It’s not enough. There really _isn’t_ time. But she smiles into the kiss, the corners of her mouth seeming to almost physically raise the corners of his with them.

“I should have known,” he says, which is about more than just the stolen medical supplies.

“You should have,” Jyn agrees.

* * *

Her adrenaline has faded, and she knows she doesn’t have much more strength, but she also knows that Cassian won’t let her fade here.

It’s frightening, she thinks, to be so unlike themselves. Fumbling, graceless. They’re usually such an effective team. Her head feels heavy, her body slow. And he isn’t much better, everything shaky and imprecise. She’s too tired for it to be frustrating. She’s too distant from it all. But there’s a sense of impossibility to the whole thing.

His clumsy fingers find a bacta patch on the floor, pry it open, and they press it together to her stomach. Another joins the first, the two of them overlapping to cover the entire area of the blaster burns. He presses the wound gently, but still she cringes, biting back a whimper that doesn’t sound like any noise she’s ever made.

“Okay, it’s okay,” Cassian says, and he leans forward and wraps his free arm around her, and he presses a thoughtless kiss to the side of her head, his other hand still pressing down on the patch, making sure it stays in place.

And it’s not like they don’t have more pressing issues to attend to, but Jyn feels a small, incredulous smile pass over her face all the same.

“Stimshots,” she says, hands looking for the pocket on her vest where she stashed them. For a horrible moment, she thinks they must have fallen out, but then she finds the clasp and opens it, taking two of the small cylinders out. Cassian’s reaction is much the same as hers had been: a prayer, it seems. She doesn’t understand the words, but she hears the meaning anyway. He injects himself, first. Gives himself a moment to let the adrenaline flood him, clenches his fist and exhales hard, through clenched teeth. She wonders, briefly, how bad this is for his health after days of torture, but there isn’t time to worry about that now. With the stim in his system, he’s able to focus, and he gives her the second shot.

Her head clears almost instantly, the world losing its fog, its gray, its creeping blackness. Full color, now, everything red and bright. The pain, exhaustion, it doesn’t fade so much as it _explodes_ from her, leaves her feeling invincible.

“Can you stand?” he asks her.

“Can _you_?” she asks in return.

“The destroyer is tilting.”

“I know. We have to move.”

She holds up the blaster rifle, eyebrow quirked up, and he nods. Takes it. His fingers are already working better.

When it comes time to stand, neither of them do particularly well. She picks up Thane’s blaster pistol, but staggers a bit under her own inertia and needs to pause, her knuckles white as she grips the doorframe.

Cassian grunts as he moves, the rifle held tight to his body like he’s trying to contain himself. They draw together instinctively, each sparing an arm to wrap around the other, using their shared weight to prop each other up.

“Just like Scarif,” she says, gritting her teeth as they take their first tandem step outside the cell.

“Why would you say that?” Cassian asks, grinning down at her, aghast. “We almost died on Scarif.”

“We almost died three minutes ago,” she reminds him. Grimaces as they take another step. “It was – _ah_ – aspirational?”

“Aspirational,” Cassian repeats, a breathy laugh.

“A little bit of hope.”

The stims are really kicking in, and they pick up speed once they get in sync, once they figure out how to walk without causing each other pain.

“Bodhi and the others are waiting for us,” Jyn says, pausing once they reach the entryway to the detention center. She hesitates, looks up at him. “It’s getting there that’ll be the issue.”

“I’m with you,” Cassian says. “Lead the way.”

* * *

The darkness of the hallway covers them. As the stimshots kick in, the need to lean on each other fades, and they can separate. Can dash along deserted corridors, checking the hallways behind them and ahead, always moving forward. More than one unfortunate trooper separated from their platoon takes a knife to the underside of their chin and finds themselves stuffed into a tight corner.

If there was more time, it would be easy to strip the bodies of their armor. It would be easy to make it the rest of the way to the hanger without being seen. But there is no time, and so they leave the bodies where they lay.

The advantage they have is that Jyn knows exactly where she’s going. Bodhi’s words and descriptions still ring loud in her mind, guiding her, leading her through the less frequently traveled corridors that he pointed out. She can hear troopers shouting, somewhere near, and she knows they’re close to the power station that Baze and Chirrut blew up.

“This way,” she says to Cassian, tugging him through the doorway that will cut through a seldom-used recreational facility. Just a few more turns before they’re in the hanger.

They’re halfway through the recreation room, dimly lit with red light, shadows of exercise equipment dashed across the floor, terrifyingly human-shaped, when a door on the other side of the room slides open.

Cassian reacts first, tugging Jyn down between two treadmills, out of the line of sight of whoever is entering. He’s hunched behind her, close, his hand heavy on her shoulder, and his breathing and her breathing together sound so _loud_ in the otherwise silent room.

Then, footsteps.

“I don’t care if it’s enough to barely get us across the system. We need to get away from this damned moon. How long will that take?”

Jyn recognizes that voice. Cassian does too, evident in the way his fingers curl against her spine, gripping the fabric as if he’s ready to pull her back, keep her away from Raleigh. She glances over her shoulder at him, meets his eye. His jaw is clenched so tightly that his muscle is twitching.

She can’t tell him it’s okay, can’t reassure him with words, and maybe that’s a good thing. She’s never been great at them. But she can reach back, settle her hand against his neck, give him what she hopes is a reassuring smile, her thumb passing over that twitching, restless jaw muscle, trying to soothe it.

He dips his head towards her, nodding, understanding, and she keeps her hand where it is. So does he.

The answer from whoever’s with Raleigh is quiet, polite, but Raleigh is booming and furious. Impotently angry.

“ _Find_ him, then! Anyone who can hold a spanner the right way, get them on it.”

The two officers pass through the room quickly, the skittering flashlight never coming close to Cassian and Jyn’s side of the room, but Jyn doesn’t breathe easy until they’re gone. And even then, her heart won’t slow, her face still feels flushed with fear.

“We need to go,” she says. Cassian nods. Even still, they stay crouched there for another moment. She bends her head towards his, rests her forehead against his. Cassian nods again. His jaw twitches under her fingertips.

“Okay,” he says, swallowing his fear.

Paralyzing. He won’t want to admit it, but she knows it. She tugs him closer, just for a moment. Just for a taste of _I’m here_ , spoken through touch, which they’ve always been better at anyway. Cassian nods again. He’s ready. He’s stopped shaking.

They’re not as cautious as they should be. Both desperate to be out of here, both feeling the ghost of Raleigh passing through. Which is why, when the door behind them opens, only Cassian is behind cover. Only Cassian can duck, hitting the floor. Jyn is in the open.

And Raleigh is back.

He seems surprised to see her, but Jyn thinks she can probably still pull it off. If he hasn’t been down to the medbay, if he hasn’t heard about the bodies in the detention area, there’s a chance she can talk him out of raising alarm.

“Sir!” she exclaims, taking a step towards him. Her blaster pistol is holstered quickly. “Sir, thank the force.”

“How did you get here?” Raleigh asks. Calculating, she thinks, the improbable distance between this room and the medbay where she’s supposed to be waiting out this power outage with the rest of them. The ship lilts slightly more, the degree of its drift sharpening. Only slightly, but still. Worrying.

_Every degree it starts to tilt makes it harder to take off_ , Bodhi had told her. Warning.

“I was looking for the hanger,” she admits. “I was afraid.”

Using her quiet voice, her soft voice. Weak and needing. She’s not altogether sure that this is the kind of man who will respond to that (his cold, dead eyes stand out in her memory), but he’s at least the kind of man who might be swayed by someone wanting him to protect them.

_Ego is a weakness_ , Saw’s voice says, out of some deeper memory.

“Afraid?”

“There was something happening in the cells. Shooting. Shouting. And the power. I wanted to be somewhere safe. Somewhere I could get away.”

All she needs is for him to leave. Just for a moment, just long enough to stick his head out and order that officer he was with before to send someone down to check her story. The hanger is so close, she can almost feel the vibration of ships taking off. Bodhi is waiting. Chirrut and Baze. Her family is _right there_ , and all she needs is for Raleigh to make a single mistake.

But he walks forward instead. Walks toward her, eyes on her, as he picks his way around the recreational equipment in the dim red lighting.

Adrenaline thrums in her veins. If he gets close enough to see that the red on her skin isn’t _just_ lighting, to see that she’s bleeding, that she’s covered in someone else’s blood, to see that she’s injured now in ways she wasn’t injured before, the whole thing will be off.

Then again, the way he’s looking at her, she thinks he might already know it.

“How did you know which way to go?” he asks.

“The signs.”

But that’s too quick an answer, and Jyn knows it. Raleigh walks even closer, and she sees as he does that he’s _smiling_. This is a smile that reaches his eyes. An expression that his whole face envelops. He’s glad for this. He _wanted_ this.

She thinks of Cassian, his jaw clenching beneath her fingers. Afraid. Jyn’s lip curls a bit.

Fuck it, right? She’s caught. She’s not talking her way out of this, and he doesn’t deserve it anyway.

She raises her blaster pistol before he can get close enough to touch her.

“I had a feeling,” he says, smug, and she knows he could be bluffing, could be inwardly cursing himself for letting his guard down, but she isn’t _sure_ , and so she takes a step back. Takes another.

“Did you?” she asks, keeping her voice as blasé and calm as possible.

If she was in top shape – if she was in _any_ kind of shape – she would take him down easily. Silently. He’s a hard looking man, with sharp eyes and large hands and a stance that tells her he was a fighter in his youth. But there’s a softness to his features that suggests ambition and rewards have fed him well. Have given him power that doesn’t need to be physical. This is a man she could have easily beaten, if only Thane hadn’t been such a prick.

The stimshot is keeping her on her feet, is keeping her vision from fogging over with pain and with injury. It’s possible she could still take him out quietly, with her hands and her feet and her knife. But she isn’t _sure_ , and she needs to be sure.

Shoot the admiral and run before the blaster fire can draw attention from nearby troopers? Or take the risk and fight him hand to hand?

“Well,” says the admiral suddenly, looking over Jyn’s shoulder. He doesn’t look scared. Doesn’t _sound_ scared. But she can tell he’s at least surprised by the development. “ _This_ is a little unexpected.”

Jyn doesn’t take her eyes off him, but she knows he’s spotted Cassian. And she hears the softness of Cassian’s footsteps as he moves up behind her, adding his blaster rifle to her own.

“Is it unexpected?” Jyn asks. Again questioning. Needling. She wonders, briefly, what she’s trying to do. Is she _trying_ to piss him off? Is she trying to infuriate him out of some misguided need for him to feel _something_ close to what she has felt the past few days?

“I’ve dealt with Rebel spies before. Used to be my job, before I was promoted.” Tugging, ostentatiously, at his officer’s uniform. “They know their duty. They know their _worth_ , or lack thereof. If I was lucky enough to take one alive, it was often a matter of time before they’d find a way to die on me. A spy knows he’s better off dead, because then there’s no chance of talking. A spy knows he’s not going to be rescued, so why are _you_ here? I have to assume this was you.” Gesturing to the red room around them, the lack of power, the slight drift.

“Might’ve been,” Jyn admits. She’s fairly certain that he’s backed into a corner, but his confidence is unsettling. He doesn’t seem very much like a man who thinks he’s going to be put down. Maybe he thinks they’re too afraid to make noise. Maybe he’s stalling. “What are you thinking?”

This, she asks of Cassian, tilting her head slightly towards him without looking away from Raleigh.

“We kill him,” Cassian answers, voice low, and Jyn sees something pass over Raleigh’s face. Something like hunger. Like fury. Like victory.

“Go ahead,” Raleigh says. He still doesn’t sound very concerned, and Jyn is more and more tense, standing there, trying to figure out _why_ he doesn’t sound concerned. “Kill me. Draw the Stormtroopers here, by all means. You’ll never get off this ship. You aren’t even in the same _hanger_ as your shuttle. You’ll be caught again, and this time they won’t keep you here. No, they’ll take you both to Lord Vader, and _he_ will be able to make you talk where I could not. Go ahead and kill me.”

“This is usually where someone provides an alternative,” Jyn points out. Cassian lets out a quiet, frustrated, growling sound. Maybe because she’s not taking it as seriously as he thinks she should. Maybe because he thinks they need to _go_ , and she’s wasting time taunting her prey. That’s probably true.

“You turn yourselves in, and I retain control of your questioning.”

“After seeing the state of _him_ , I’ll pass,” Jyn says. She takes her eyes off Raleigh for a moment, trusting Cassian to have her back. He’s tense, rigid. Staring at Raleigh with a loathing that’s surprising to see so openly on his face.

“Why did you come for him?” Raleigh asks, drawing Jyn’s attention back to him. “The Rebellion doesn’t send rescue missions after just anyone. Who is he? Why is _he_ so special?”

Raleigh knows he’s going to die, Jyn realizes. He knows that Cassian isn’t going to hesitate to pull the trigger. He just wants to _understand._ Cassian must have given him even less than she assumed he would.

“You think the Rebellion sent me?” she asks. “Not likely. I came for him on my own. Oh, and with the rest of my team. You didn’t think I was going to try and fly out of here on the same shuttle, did you?” She clucks her tongue, feigning disappointment, feeling a savage pleasure in the surprise that flickers over Raleigh’s face. “Sorry to put a hole in your little post-mortem victory, but we’re very much going to get out of here.”

“You’re her, aren’t you?” Raleigh asks. Second person who’s said this to her today. She’s a little sick of her reputation preceding her. She thinks, for a second, that maybe he’s better at this whole interrogation thing than she thought, if he’s able to determine who she is. But which part of her does he know? Daughter of an Imperial scientist? Daughter of a partisan rebel? The madwoman who stole the Death Star plans and helped bring the Empire to its knees? It’s her turn to feel surprise when Raleigh says, “Jyn. The woman he calls for in his sleep.”

Warmth, then. Pooling low in her stomach. She glances back at Cassian, who looks back at her, his face open, sorry, sad.

“Congratulations,” he says. “You solved it.”

And when he squeezes the trigger and Raleigh crumples to the floor, the world feels a little less full of evil than it had.

* * *

They run, then. Abandoning all caution. It’s the defensive, scattered running of Jedha, but she takes them the right way, down the right halls. She isn’t sure if anyone heard Cassian ending Raleigh’s life, but they have to act as if the whole destroyer is coming for them.

“This way,” Jyn says, more than once. Keeping them both focused. Another turn, another peek around the corner. “This way.”

Five more troopers fall between the two of them, but their way is blessedly clear. Blessedly free of danger.

When they reach the hanger, Jyn almost can’t believe it. It almost _has_ to be a trap. Bodhi and Baze and Chirrut will be dead in the ship, or they’ll have been taken away. Raleigh, injured but not much the worse for wear, will reveal that he’s won. Troopers will surround them.

Jyn looks back at Cassian as they hover there, uncertain, on the edge of the hanger.

“I’m with you,” he says, and he reaches for her, takes her arm in his hand. Squeezes. She nods.

One deep breath. Two. They can do this.

Their running is more of an awkward, shuffling jog. The stimshots are wearing off, or maybe just being overpowered by how fucking _finished_ they both are. Jyn’s wounds are catching up to her. Cassian’s exhaustion. They’re close, they’re _so_ close, and another setback might kill them, but then the cargo ship opens up, and Baze and Chirrut stand there, waiting. Baze has a gun in his hand and a ridiculous Imperial cap on his head, taming his beautiful hair, but it’s him. Chirrut too looks almost unrecognizable without his robes, but Jyn would know his smile from a whole system away, and he’s reaching out for them.

Baze helps Cassian, lifting the smaller man practically off his feet as he half-carries him back on board. Chirrut supports Jyn, hand finding her stomach as he grimaces in sympathetic pain.

“You did it, little star,” he says, hugging her close as he helps her into the ship. “Bodhi!”

“On it!” Bodhi shouts from the cockpit.

No one stops them. No one shoots them down. The Afflictor still drifts, powerless, and they’re away.

* * *

It’s almost giddy, at first, the celebration of survival. Bodhi darts between the two injured crewmates, hugging them, checking them over, patching up what he can while begging them for details. The telling of it is sparse, almost bare. Chirrut supplies his own commentary, more often than not, guessing at how horrible something must have felt.

“So strong,” he says of Jyn, hearing as she describes fighting Thane. “So dedicated. And you, Captain. You never spoke a word.”

_The woman he calls for in his sleep_.

Jyn steals a glance at Cassian, finds him already looking back toward her, a small smile on his face.

“Not a word,” he agrees.

* * *

But the high of battle fades, as it always does. Bodhi enlists Baze to help him pilot – sure to be a disaster, which Chirrut decides he needs to witness – and Jyn and Cassian find themselves alone. Wordless, they look at each other, Cassian deciding and Jyn understanding.

Now that they’re safe, it can’t wait. Cassian won’t let it. Jyn would have probably given it a few hours, but Cassian has had time to think about what he wants to say to her, and now it’s here.

He starts with, “Jyn, I’m so sorry,” and it’s not the most creative start, but it’s also not a bad one. “I was never going to leave without talking to you. I just…I’m not good at…I mean, I’m not…”

He sighs, frustrated, says a short series of words in some other language. He leans his head back against some cargo and stares up at the ceiling.

“This can wait,” Jyn points out. She’s stretched out on her back, one knee bent in front of her, because sitting up hurts too much.

“I don’t want it to wait. I just don’t have the right words. I thought I did.”

“Just say them, then. Whatever they are. However ridiculous they sound. I won’t laugh at you.” He has to know that _that’s_ true, at least, because he looks mollified. “You don’t even have to look at me,” she says, giving him a small smile. “Sometimes that’s easier.”

“Is it?” He sounds a little doubtful, but he closes his eyes. For a few seconds, she’s sure he’s fallen asleep. She watches him, affection and annoyance curling in her stomach, entwining as they have since the beginning.

He looks so small, like this. So tired. Tired in a way that has nothing to do with what he’s endured the past few days and has everything to do with what he’s endured for the past twenty years. _More machine than your droid_ , Thane had said. Jyn wonders how anyone could think that of Cassian. How anyone could look at him and think that he doesn’t feel.

“I’ve never felt about anyone the way I feel about you,” Cassian says, so suddenly that it startles her. She closes her eyes quickly, just in case he decides to open his. She doesn’t speak, doesn’t reply, waits to see if he’s finished. He’s not. “From the moment I disobeyed orders to kill your father, something has been different in me. I can’t do the things I used to anymore. I don’t even want to. It isn’t just you. Draven might think that, but he’s wrong. It’s all of this. It’s not being able to look in a mirror without…” he stops, sighs. She thinks he might be done for good, but he finally says, “It’s not the same as it used to be. I had nothing, before. I had nothing to live for, nothing to fear. It’s not easy to admit when I’m afraid of something. But I’m afraid of you.”

“Of me?” Jyn asks, pushing herself up onto her elbows, which is a terrible idea that makes her feel a little nauseas from the sudden spike of pain. Cassian’s eyes are open, and he’s looking at her, and he doesn’t necessarily look afraid. She thinks he looks sad.

“Of the responsibility of- of caring for you. I don’t know how else to describe it except fear. Sometimes, you seem to understand me so well it’s as if I’ve known you my whole life. Or like you have some way to see inside my mind. But sometimes I realize…you can’t. You don’t know. I have to _tell_ you, and that’s not something I’m used to doing. And sometimes I forget.” He closes his eyes again, shakes his head. “I forgot on Hoth.”

“Blank,” Jyn says, and he looks at her again. “That’s what it looks like. Your blank, spy’s face. I hate it.”

He gives a small smile at that, twisted by his injuries.

“I hate it too,” he admits, voice quiet, eyes going back down to his hands, clasped in front of him. “I’m sorry.”

“I know you are.”

“Bodhi. He said…he implied…he was right. I know he was. I just…I don’t ever want to make you feel like you’ve been abandoned. Like Saw.”

It’s a question, too. He knows the basics. He probably understands that Saw leaving her had a more profound impact than she’s ever said. But she’s never said the words to him. They aren’t the types of people who describe things like that to each other.

At least, they hadn’t been.

“Saw left me,” she says. Familiar ground, stating the facts. Leading into: “he said he’d be back, but he wasn’t. On Jedha, he said it was because the others were starting to figure out who I _really_ was. They’d want to use me as a hostage, as a tool against the Empire, and they would think Saw was weak if he refused. So he left me. Gave me a blaster and told me to stay where I was until morning. And he never came back.” Cassian doesn’t look away, and neither does she. They look at each other, across the space between them. Sometimes it’s easier if you don’t look, but Jyn doesn’t think that’s true of this time. She wants to see him. She wants him to see her.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I never want to…I don’t want to be that, for you. I don’t want to make you think of that.”

“I don’t think you’ll be able to help it,” she admits. “If you keep taking these missions for Draven. If you keep leaving me behind.”

Cassian nods slowly, wearing a face that’s anything but blank.

“I understand,” he says. Jyn’s not entirely sure he does, but she doesn’t have any more words for him. She sighs, looks back at the ceiling. She pats the floor beside her, and he stretches out, makes himself comfortable, groaning with the weight of himself again. Jyn reaches for his hand, and he takes it. They shuffle closer, shoulders touching, faces towards the ceiling.

“He was going to kill you,” she says.

Apparently there _are_ words.

“I know.”

“He sent us a message that you’d already been killed. We only found out the truth because someone under him was a bit less of a bastard than he is.” Cassian evidently didn’t know _that_ part, because he’s silent. She can tell that he’s looking at her, but she keeps her eyes turned upward. “He was going to kill you, but he didn’t. Because I wouldn’t let him.”

She looks at him now, eyes flickering over his face.

“Jyn…” he says, mouth open for a moment longer, like he wants to say something but isn’t sure what he _can_ say.

“He already killed my father,” she says, voice steel. “Don’t let him take you from me too.”

Cassian lets out a quiet sigh, and _now_ he understands. He doesn’t say it this time, but she knows he does. It’s in the way he rests his head against hers. The way he nods.

She isn’t sure if she had planned to say anything after that. And if he gathers the words to say anything else, she doesn’t hear them. She falls asleep there, fingers laced with his, on the cold deck of the cargo ship, safely on the way back to the Rebel fleet.

* * *

It’s not in Basic, when he says it. And he’s almost certain she’s asleep. So maybe it doesn’t count, but it feels like it does. It feels fucking terrifying to say, “I’m afraid of you because I think I may be in love with you” out loud. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, SO, I've done some rearranging of my outline and am cutting this story a little short, because I think I need a SHORT break (short here meaning probably, like, a couple of days). I'm having some second thoughts about Angst Train Part 2, and I need to either take some time to get over my annoying anxiety about it OR rewrite it into something else, but I didn't want to end this mission on a transitional note, just in case it takes some time. So a little bit of a happy ending for the time being! And a good part on which to disembark the angst train if you don't want to continue??? 
> 
> I sincerely appreciate all of your comments, but I've also been feeling very anxious about how long this series has turned out to be, and I know a lot of you are asking for a more immediate happy ending than I had planned out (my first draft is on Mission 5 right now and is still only a little more than 40,000 words, while the posted total of only to Mission 3 is almost double that!! I did NOT anticipate fleshing out the series as much as I have, but here we are). I'm guessing I might come off as kind of a dick, like I'm relishing in your angst pain, but I assure you the opposite is true. I was just trying to write a maybe 50,000 word kinda angsty story about these two assholes learning to fall in love despite being terrible at it, but it has turned into something much bigger than that. And on the bright side, it (and you!) has given me something to get through the current political hellscape, but on the other hand, it's also been causing me a lot of second-guessing and writer-anxiousness that I need to work through. I tend to play it off like it's a joke, but I really am an emotional wreck (see: political hellscape, anxiety), and I need to get my shit together before I get rolling on another once-a-day posting spree that will be the next mission.
> 
> I guess what I'm trying to say is see y'all in a few days for more angst (but i actually am really sorry about it, and not like... joking-sarcastic sorry, but actually sorry D: )


End file.
